


Hungry Ghosts

by SignificantOtter



Series: Hold With the Hare, Run With the Hound [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, Police, Puns & Word Play, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SignificantOtter/pseuds/SignificantOtter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A relic of Nick’s past returns in an unexpected way, and he and Judy have to grapple with the consequences.</p>
<p>Also featured: an almost unbelievable number of animal puns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m gonna be a doctor,” the mountain goat slurred. He rolled around groggily on the stretcher, the scent of cheap fruit wine punctuating his disoriented grunts, traces of energy drink stains dotting his scraggly beard. One of the EMTs glanced sideways at Nick, in search of implied moral support.

“A+ for good intentions, kiddo.” Nick crossed his arms and nodded sagely. “Maybe getting your stomachs pumped will count as extra credit.”

The team of ibex wheeled their patient down the hill and into the waiting ambulance, the whirrs of the stretcher’s lift assist drowning out the young man’s no-doubt witty retort. Nick had no doubt that, in a few years, the pitiful ungulate in front of him would be a respected member of society. He might even graduate with honors. All these little screw-ups would become hilarious fodder whenever he needed banter with the successful bioarchitects and marketing VPs at his ten-year reunion.

Nick couldn’t stand daglocks like him.

He ambled over to the idling squad car, waving one friendly paw at the medics as they took a right turn out of the warren of frat houses. He opened the passenger-side door and took a seat. He rolled up the window to muffle the sounds of hoofstep bass drops against a chorus of inebriated bleats. From the seat next to him, he heard the faint, resigned scratching of ink on paper.

“Is it wrong of me to hope that the next call is for a Nighthowler attack?” Judy huffed.

“Officer Hopps, I’m very disappointed to hear that kind of cynical talk. We swore to protect and serve the citizens of this fair city.” The pen paused mid-stroke as Judy’s ears went flat with irritation, her eyes squinted up and sideways at the smirking fox in the car. “And that includes the citizens who think that their idiocy is a gift.”

“I stepped on a hairball in there, Nick.”

“And you’re not wearing those boots into the apartment tonight,” Nick teased. Judy flipped her notepad closed with conviction and a faint harrumph. “Besides, that’s nothing. I once drained an elephant bar’s septic tank and sold it to some serval bootleggers.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick watched as his partner mustered a tired smile. “Crackers to Betsy, why?” She stretched her little limbs as the dashboard clock clicked over to almost three in the morning. Somewhere nearby, a goat screamed along to the chorus. “And why do you always tell me these things when I’m too tired to fight back?”

“Something about elephant digestion boiled down the spirits and left behind a gas that gave quite a kick,” Nick continued. Judy saw her own face in the driver’s side mirror as it twisted into a novel mixture of fascination and horror. “They distilled the gas into little huff-sized cylinders and passed it off as medical-grade anesthetic. I heard it was very popular in this neck of the woods.”

“That’s…” Judy’s face had taken a turn for the genuinely mortified, while simultaneously knowing full well that Nick was pressing her buttons on purpose. “I don’t even know what that is! What about your “no victims” rule? How old were you? I don’t care what the statute of limitations is on…” Judy struggled to pinpoint the right legal offense, sputtering.

“Paying the rent? Running a good hustle? Grossing you out?”

“Shut your mouth, Wilde!” Judy cracked, in one of the most endearing impersonations of Bogo that Nick had ever heard. Her face lit up with a giggling incredulousness. Her shoulders relaxed as she shoved her notepad firmly next to the gear shift, stifling her laughter.

“It was barely illegal, Carrots.” Nick counseled. He stroked his chin with an air of practiced pontification. “Extralegal, if you will. Just something for kids like that one who like to numb their whiskers more than study.”

Judy shook her head and picked up the radio, looking over. “I hate you, and I hate your stories.”

Nick maintained his gaze over the hood, smirking quietly. “Liar.”

Judy called in, her voice noticeably more chipper than it had been a few minutes ago. “All clear at the university. Got anything else for us?”

The dispatcher crackled from the radio handset. “Nothing next shift can’t handle. Go to bed, you two.” Somewhere across town, McHorn glanced across the cab to Wolfard and muttered conspiratorially. “Whose bed?” Wolfard pounded the armrest as he tried not to choke on his cricket burger.

“Finally,” Judy sighed happily, slotting the radio back into place. “Yours or mine?”

“Mine. My neighbors are a brick wall and a space heater, and they never argue.” Judy had actually moved, into a basement apartment below a quiet marmot couple. Nick affectionately referred to it as “upper crust” on account of the mildew that had ringed the shower drain when she’d first moved in (he said that any fungus in that bright of a purple was just being uppity, and trying to rise above its station). But Judy still referred to her antique radiator and jenky refrigerator as Bucky and Pronk, respectively.

“Besides,” Nick amended. “We’ve been postponing these kids’ playtime long enough.”

“I’m pretty sure the goats have already forgotten we were ever here.”

“Not them.” Nick continued to stare straight ahead and slightly to the side. “I mean the two panthers in the driver’s seat, at one o’clock. They haven’t moved an inch since we came back out.”

Quietly, for the first time, Judy followed Nick’s gaze into the street. Sitting on the opposite side of the street a few spots up, parked in the opposite direction, the clean silhouette of the driver’s seat was disrupted by an ungainly mass of glossy black. To Judy’s eyes, it hardly registered as anything more than a trick of the street lights.

“…No.”

“Oh, absolutely. Night vision for the win.”

Judy reached for her ticket book. It was running low. “We should…”

“You heard the lady. We’re off-duty, fluff.”

Judy took the steering wheel in her paws and took a deep breath. Her whole body vacillated between exhausted and dutiful. She exhaled. “At least give them a warning or something.”

“I think this is warning enough.”

“Do they realize that you’ve spotted them?”

“Oh, I haven’t broken eye contact with the guy this whole time.”

Judy tilted her neck towards the roof and let out a unexpectedly delighted yelp. She reached out to punch Nick as hard as she could, but came up short and just pounded the edge of Nick’s seat, repeatedly. “You’re such a creep! You’re worse than they are!” She thought of the poor jungle cats, forced to watch a live mocking of their cramped, frozen coitus. “We’re terrible cops!”

Nick straightened his spine with an affected pride. “We’re watching over this beautiful city, Hopps. Like underpaid guardian angels.” He finally broke his ten-yard-stare, glancing to his cohort as she turned the wheel towards the street and edged forward. “Creep with me, partner.”

They rolled past, Judy smirking at the wheel and casting a sidelong glance at the petrified couple. From his perch in the passenger seat facing them, Nick looked down and gave them a gentle, encouraging wink.


	2. Chapter 2

“Is that a fact? Because the lease said no pets. And you signed the lease.”

As she stepped out of the bath, Judy listened to the muffled conversation with one ear. She and Nick had both taken their time crawling out of bed with all the enthusiasm that the late shift deserved, and it was already verging on early afternoon. Nick’s walls were still thicker than her first place, but these converted central district hotels tended to treat building codes more like bothersome suggestions. She’d even looked into a couple efficiency studios in Tundratown. One was across the street from an iceberg park, but at least polar bears knew how to insulate.

“Absolutely, ma’am,” the young koala demurred. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

Judy opened Nick’s medicine cabinet and took out the small aerosol can of Musk-Off. She took a few seconds to spray herself liberally, front and back. The ads for this brand were ridiculous: they always featured a beleaguered skunk, or panicked muskrat, their clothes torn asunder, running through what looked like a bombed-out cityscape or fleeing blindly through a desert canyon. Then they’d turn around to find themselves pursued by an army of scantily-clad minxes in heat, pouring down the canyon walls or through the streets like water out of a burst beaver dam.

Well, Nick thought the ads were ridiculous; Judy thought they were hilarious. And since Nick was twice her size and needed twice as much, it had only seemed fair that Judy did the buying. He didn’t get to choose the brand.

“Really?” Judy heard the capybara snort, a sound she had somehow never associated with capybara until just now. “Because I could swear that I’ve heard chirping.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” She sounded like a less-practiced Nick, when Grizzoli asked if he knew anywhere to get the fancy, imported salmon on the cheap. “But I do DJ, part-time? Gallery parties, dance clubs, things like that? So I listen to a lot of electronic music - I just got some really great experimental twitchclaw albums, where they…” She aborted her nerdiness mid-stream. “But, uh, I totally understand how weird it must sound sometimes when I practice. I really will try to keep it down.”

Judy slipped on her flannel shirt and walked out of the bath, grabbing her uniform bag off the hook and slinging it over her shoulder in one fell swoop. Nick leaned against the kitchen counter with a thermos of iced coffee in one hand, and extended a carrot smoothie towards Judy in the other. “Your bunny juice, dear.” Judy smacked his tail with her free hand as Nick opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

“Ah!” The capybara smelled an advantage. “Well, maybe we should just ask an officer of the law.” Nick watched as the koala maintained her thin veneer of chipper deniability. “Mr. Wilde, how within my rights would I be to evict a tenant who violates a signed lease?”

Nick smiled coolly. “Good morning, Ms. Snoutburrow.” He felt for the poor koala, but he’d irked enough landlords in his day and wasn’t about to bring any additional heat down on his head for his own apartment noises. “As long as the lease clearly lists eviction as a consequence of breaking the lease, I imagine you could make that decision.” The capybara puffed out her chest with smug satisfaction, glancing sidelong at the koala.

“But speaking as the light sleeper on the other side of the wall,” Nick continued, “I can’t say I’ve heard anything myself.” Ms. Snoutburrow’s whiskers soured noticeably. “Ms. Treeton’s been a model neighbor, if I do say so.” The anxious marsupial discreetly exhaled. Nick let his own smug smile linger for an extra beat.

“And, technically…” Judy squeezed past Nick, donning Nick’s cap emblazoned with “ZPD” in bold letters across the front. “This is still a tenant’s rights city, so you certainly can’t inspect an apartment without the renter’s express permission. Written permission, ideally.” The landlady shuffled her slightly webbed feet against the floorboards, suppressing another snort. “And conflicting reports of noises certainly doesn’t qualify as probably cause. I know a lemur who laughs like a hyena. You’ve met Gary,” she said, turning to Nick. Nick crossed his arms and tilted his head in Snoutburrow’s direction, raising his eyebrows with an air of would-you-believe it? “It’s the darndest thing,” Judy mused.

The capybara muttered what sounded like parting niceties but felt like freezerburn. She waddled off down the hallway, leaving behind a relieved koala who thought she deserved a medal for biting her own tongue. Nick turned to her, leaning against the doorframe. “That reminds me, Hadley,” he said, as the miffed rodent disappeared from view. “You should totally invite us to one of your shows sometime. You should see the moves on this one,” jerking a thumb to Judy behind him. She hip-checked him in the thigh as she walked past.

“Oh, totally! I’ve got fliers!” Hadley enthused, her ears still twitching with nervous energy. “I’ll slip them under your door or something.”

“That’d be nice,” Nick said. “You’ve always practiced around our weird schedule, it’s the least we can do. Take care, Hadley.” Nick tottered off behind Judy, somehow still the second to leave despite being the first to rise. Again.

“You too, you two.” Hadley closed her door, charmed at her own witty goodbye. She ran the chain across the lock and glanced over to the window, which actually made very little sense on the third floor, except maybe for a semi-irrational fear of giraffes.

She picked up her bowl of eucalyptus chips from off her homemade theremin, where she’d left it. She walked into the back of the apartment, past a pseudo-organized stack of multimeters and Boysenberry Boa circuit boards, around the corner and to the bathroom. She cracked opened the door.

“It’s OK, Fiddle.” Hadley cooed. “The angry lady’s gone.” A jumbo cricket skittered across the tile floor, leaping vigorously up her leg. Hadley plucked the megafauna off her hip and cradled her like a cub. “Mama’s going to have invest in more soundproofing, you little rascal. Look what I have to do for you.” She softly scritched the creature’s exoskeleton, his legs vibrating with glee.


	3. Chapter 3

Bottomless coffee at the corner diner was the best part about the night shift.

The weekend had passed, and with it the “tactical chunders” of Zootopia’s newest, most ambitious binge drinkers. But they’d still started the evening breaking up a prairie dog scuffle outside Amber & Ivy, a Meadowlands sports bar which was seemingly the most popular spot for squirrelbros to flex their hackles after hours. They’d drawn such a crowd - dozens of rubberneckers on their tip-toes, craning to watch Officer Adorable Ladybunny squeeze five of their mates into the backseat - that it took them twenty minutes just to deescalate the situation and find out what had sparked the fight in the first place. Even Judy had no idea of the correct citation for “illicit camel boxing.”

Higgins and Fangmeyer had it weirder. Who robs a beetle factory?

Judy stood on a fully-extended seat at the counter, scribbling diligent details into her logbook while Nick tucked into his veggie omelet. With boot camp months behind him, Nick had begun to notice hints of extra belly fat fighting to reclaim their rightful position around his belly button. It felt ridiculous to feel self-conscious about his figure, so he liked to claim that Judy was on his case to eat healthier. He once asked Ben to “sneak” him a doughnut, which he then delivered directly to Judy. Exactly like she had asked him to; she could eat her weight in bear claws.

“I just don’t know why they had to spit everywhere.”

“You try keeping your mouth dry around that mouthguard,” Nick remarked around a forkful of cheesy beets. “Did you see the right cross of the guy in the green trunks? Is cross the right word? What’s halfway between a punch and a headbutt?” He glanced over to confirm that his partner properly appreciated his witty repartee. “Neckslap?”

“His footing was terrible.” Judy clicked her pen shut and pointed it at Nick’s chest, shaking her head gently with disappointment. “You don’t know a thing about boxing.”

“It wasn’t my best subject at the academy, no,” Nick conceded.

The rusty bell dinged above the doorframe as another pair of midnight customers straggled inside. A sturdily-built wombat and a heavyset beaver walked up to the counter in grease-stained overalls, each one carrying a hardhat stamped with the emblems of their respective unions: the Sandhogs, and the Paddletails. The beaver took a seat next to Nick. They casually looked over to one another, Nick still chewing languidly.

“…Nick, you russet prick.”

Nick lowered his fork in mock reverence. “Lou,” Nick marveled. “It’s been ages.” He leaned back towards Judy, who watched with eager anticipation. “You look worse than ever.”

“So do you,” the flat-tail huffed. “You really skimped on that costume. What did you make that out of, old soda cans?” Lou reached out and tapped a dirty claw on Nick’s badge, narrowing his eyes with appraisement. “Sounds like tin to me.”

“What do you know about metals?” The wombat countered. “Stick to your control room, you crotchety old codger.” She extended a reasonably washed paw across the counter. “Nice to see you again, Nick. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?” Lou huffed a nonargument. “Nice to meet you, too, Officer Hopps. I’m Ursula.”

Judy stretched the length of her body in front of Nick to take the offered claw. “The pleasure’s all mine,” she said.

“One of these days, Carrots, somebody in town isn’t already going to know your name,” Nick cautioned.

Lou and Ursula ordered one single, hefty plate of stir-fried herbs, bark and tubers, with a side of grits. Judy glanced over at the clock above the fry station, and saw the minute hand slowly inching its way towards midnight.

“What has you two out so late?” Judy asked. “Or early? I’m not entirely sure.” Judy's short career had spanned a single job whose regular hours had only ever fallen between “now” and “long.”

“Being two sticks short of a bundle,” Lou groused. “Some khatheads broke into a control panel on the Climate Wall and made off with all the copper wiring. Shorted out the heat exchange in Savannah Central for ten city blocks. You ever been chewed out by some peccary punk in a camel-hair turtleneck?” He stabbed into his grits with conviction. “We’ve been on the clock for sixteen hours.”

“That’s horrible!” Judy weighed the pros and cons between fending off a bar of soused rodents versus an apartment block of frostnipped desert pigs.

“Ursula here works in the caverns,” Lou explained. “She hasn’t seen the light of day for a week.”

The wombat looked up suddenly with half a mouthful of sage grass. “My wife is a mole,” she mustered between chews. “I gave up on ever seeing the sun again when I married her.”

“I’ve actually heard that it’s kind of beautiful down there,” Judy opined. She’d been making her way through Nick’s library, whose tastes could be classified as eclectic at best. He liked to say that he’d already earned a liberal arts degree in Keeping to Myself On the ZTA.

“It’s more than kind of. My grandfather left his paw prints on all the major geoengineering projects in the city.” The caverns had been dug to accommodate the massive interchange of rain and sewage and sand that came from a dozen diverse microclimates all abutting each other without mercy, twenty-four hours a day. When they ran them dry for regular maintenance, they felt like an underworld cathedral.

“You come from a long line of sandhogs? That’s so much more exciting! Than being surrounded by nothing but farmers. Like I was, I mean.” Nick sat back and let Judy enthuse all over his omelette. She was still only just coming to terms with everything this city had to offer - and what it took to offer them. Lou, meanwhile, had taken the opportunity to sample more than his fair share of birch bits.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Ursula laughed, fiddling at the left cuff of her shirt, rolling it up to the elbow with her free hand. “I didn’t grow a thing on this table. Your folks did. Excuse me for a second.”

Judy heard the sudden release of metal snaps, and the faint sound of suction being lost. Ursula’s left forearm, which had been hidden from view behind Lou, suddenly floated up to the counter of its own accord. Judy realized that Ursula’s left paw bore a striking resemblance to a grinding wheel. It _was_ a grinding wheel.

Before she could process what she was seeing, Ursula unclipped something from the back of her belt and slid it up her sleeve. A second set of nimble maneuvers later, Ursula’s arm returned to form, ending in what resembled a paw.

“You’ve gotten an upgrade since last I saw you, Ursula.” Nick nodded. “Is that hand-engraved?”

“CNC, but still. It helps to know everybody in the machine shop,” Ursula beamed. “Best five-year anniversary gift I could have asked for. Isn’t that right, Officer.” Ursula glanced down the counter at a less-than-poker-faced Judy.

“Close your mouth, fluff,” Nick chided.

“Sorry. It just…took me by surprise.” Judy’s ears flushed red with self-awareness.

“It’s OK, hon. Here, up top.” Ursula reached across the counter with ease, her carbon composite paw at the ready. Judy reached out a tentative pad to gave Ursula a firm but gentle slap. Just as they were about to make contact, Ursula’s paw whirred around on its axis, slapping its back into Judy’s palm. Judy let out an involuntary squeak. Nick and Ursula both barked with delight; even Lou choked down a guffaw, reaching for the salt. The back of Ursula’s paw was embossed with another union logo, of a stylized termite mound.

The waitress came over to the motley crew of mammals, clearing Nick and Judy’s plates. Nick nodded politely when asked if he wanted the check. He turned to the beaver and muttered, in _sotto voce_ : “We have very similar luck in partners, you know.”

Lou looked up from his cambium mélange. He looked sternly into Nick’s eyes. “I think we’re being punished for something, fox.”

Nick solemnly pondered the condiments rack. “Well,” he ventured. “They were very big tanks.”

“IS THAT AN IPAW DOCK?” Judy shouted. Nick made room as Ursula dismounted her stool and made her way over to Judy.

“Didn’t I tell you? How dope is that? Look, I just got a notice that our joey is crying; I synced up his baby monitor to our Nest security system. I can livestream our nursery from here. You want to listen to my wife sing her back to sleep?”

“DO I.”

The check came soon enough. Nick tipped generously, because he wasn’t a monster. He took a few moments to watch Judy lose all sense of composure at the sound of an adorable rodent lullaby. The crackle of the radio broke through the clatter of silverware and small talk.

“Officer down, all available units report to Tundra Parkway and Glacier. Suspect subdued, but officer down.”


	4. Chapter 4

Neither of them had been injured on duty (their escape through the museum didn’t exactly count, as it happened during their last-minute “pro bono policing” adventure). A sloth had once tried to bite Nick, but that kind of assault was more easily averted than most. Nick still liked to joke about it, but most of the joke consisted of him reenacting the sloth for several minutes and refusing to break character. Judy had once went to the store in the middle of it, and came back to find that he’d only moved three inches. Maybe four.

The little knoll under the highway vibrated with flashing reds and blues. Details had come in that the officer - a veteran hippo named Jaghide - wasn’t critical; the same couldn’t be said for the other party. Jaghide sat grimacing on the curb as a medic patched up one of his hands, gesturing with the other as he talked, while two wolves in his squad nodded quietly. A massive lump of dingy white fur lay across the street in a heap - its legs sprawled almost lazily in the street, the torso slumped over the curb and half-sunken into the bank. A patch of snow had begun to congeal around the neck and shoulder.

Nick and Judy sat in their car, watching the scene unfold. Nick popped the glovebox and extracted a set of thermal gloves.

“Have you ever seen a dead body?” Judy asked quietly. Her face had been set with a grim introspection ever since they got word. “Besides the horror shows at the academy, I mean.” They’d both had a guest lecturer on epizoology, and his desktop had featured an actual photo of a car accident, someone’s prom date decorating the hood. At the end of the day, the guy had pleaded with them not to drink their way through their emotions. “I’m a jaded, burnt-out shell of a mammal,” he had said. “Don’t be like me.”

“No victims, remember?” Nick sighed. “I stayed as far away as I could.” The academy’s visit to a morgue was the one of those times that Nick’s tongue had kept itself in check. “You ever see anything on the farm?”

“My cousin got his leg caught in a combine when I was seven. I didn’t see it.” Judy took a breath. She flattened her ears and slid on a wool cap. Both watched the light show in front of them - the engine idling, the car growing stuffy with heat. Their paws rested gently together on the gear shift.

Judy grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled. “Let’s get this over with.”

Nick opened his door and stepped into the street. He took in a chilled breath, drawing in his body instinctively for warmth. Judy walked a step ahead of Nick, clearing the crime tape without ducking. Nick nodded at Snarlov as he stood guard, and who lifted the tape so that Nick could follow. The department always made accommodations so that rookies could witness their first corpse.

The very tip of Jaghide’s hoof peaked out of the fresh bandage wrap as they passed. “I think you just wanted to get out of driving back to the station,” one of the wolves cracked discreetly. Jaghide huffed. “Because a couple weeks of desk duty is totally my idea of a vacation,” he growled. “Flea-bitten junkie thought he was doing me a favor.”

Nick peered further up the hill from the body. A foot or two into the shadows - not especially obvious unless you were looking - a small, circular hole burrowed into the snowbank. Nick fell back a few more paces and sallied up next to the wolves.

Judy slowly came to a stop a couple feet away, giving the scene a respectful berth. Spots of blood pockmarked the street, contrasting with the canary yellow evidence markers.

He wasn’t big, as polar bears go. Any healthy fat reserves had long since gone, and his fur was speckled with grime. The taser round was still loosely attached to center mass, its leads trailing off into the snow. The neck fell at an unnatural angle, pink flesh splaying out from beneath stained fur in a jagged, jigsawed streak. Judy started concentrating on her breathing. Her attention felt almost blurred, as if focusing too much on the blood and guts would give her no choice but to realize what she was seeing. She stood in silence, as the minutes passed.

“They said that with whatever he was on, the taser barely affected him.” Nick narrated from behind in a resigned tone, gazing intently at his feet. His face wrinkled as he himself caught the scent of burnt fur, and he turned away. “He rushed Jaghide and got on top of him. They fell next to some broken bottles. Jagged grabbed the biggest piece and used it.” Nick shuddered. “He’s still high on adrenaline and acting tough in front of his guys, but it sounds like a nightmare.” Nick stared off, out and away from the underpass. He could faintly make out the neon snowflake atop Fishtown Market, flickering in the distance.

“We’re too late, aren’t we.” Nick blinked and looked over at Judy, wondering how she’d only now figured this out. Judy saw his confusion and shook her head lightly. “Not too late to stop this. Too late to stop that.” She gestured up the hill to the makeshift burrow. Nick looked the other way and shrugged, gently. “We only get called when things are past the point of no return,” Judy said, as much to herself as to Nick.

Nick chewed his lip pensively. “We can’t be everywhere, Carrots.” He stuck his paws in his pocket and fought off a shiver. “We’re not social workers. We’re not teachers. We’re not parents.” Judy turned towards him, her eyes still facing downward and her nose unconsciously quivering. “The police never asked if I was short on my utility bills, or offered me a job, or made me carrot soup when I got sick.” Judy looked up, her ears burning despite the cold. “Until I met you,” Nick went on, smiling despite himself.

“Stop, you sap.” Judy shook her head. “I’m not having a heart-to-heart over my first body.” Her face clouded over as her own snark dawned on her.

“We can have it at home all you want,” Nick promised. He’d seen her face but figured now was not the time to argue the merits of gallows humour. “Let’s get out of here.” 

Judy brushed past Nick as he turned to the bear for a parting glance. Judy hated the idea that she’d ever have to make that kind of decision that Jaghide had to make; it didn’t seem possible to make the world a better place with a death toll. But her world was better with Nick in it, she thought, and heaven forbid it’d be him who would have to make that choice instead of her. She felt a pang of shame as she realized that she would forgive Nick without a second thought. Death became more acceptable the further away it got.

Judy blinked and stopped suddenly. Her boots tapped lightly against the pavement, unaccompanied. Judy turned her head back from whence she came. Nick stood where she’d left him.

She gingerly retraced her steps until she was at Nick’s side. “Nick.” She took one of his paws in both of hers, looking up at his face with concern as he stared at the stiffening cadaver. He was breathing heavily, his nostrils jettisoning mist. “Nick.” Her fox looked down at her. He blinked away the moisture in the arctic air.

“Francis,” he said. “His name was Francis.”


	5. Chapter 5

Nick had nothing if not a good poker face, so they’d managed to get off-scene without attracting undue attention. They’d driven back to Judy’s mostly in silence, save for faint pops of radio chatter and the distracted fiddling of Nick’s claws on the armrest. Despite their distinct personalities, they both reacted to intense shocks in much of the same way, by retreating into thought. Judy didn’t pry; she remembered just how little she wanted to talk when she’d slunk back to the farm to sling carrots and lament recent mistakes.

Nick called Bogo the next morning, after a night in which they’d each spent the first hour wordlessly debating whether they should be the big or little spoon. She and Nick had been in the precinct lobby for maybe a minute before they both spotted Bogo on the balcony, staring down at them through his horn-rimmed glasses. Judy stayed behind to chat with Ben, who was somehow trying to extol the virtues of kumquat fillings. Warily strolling into his office, Nick closed the chief’s door and took a seat in front of his desk.

The chair’s upholstery smelled like a historical menagerie of nervous musk. Bogo folded his hooves in front of him.

“Do you need time?” Bogo asked. 

Nick did not anticipate this particular interrogation tactic. “Time, sir?”

“Time. A couple days off, to clear your head.”

Nick shook off the suggestion with trepidation. “No, sir,” he replied. He hadn’t run cons for over a decade without learning to compartmentalize. “I’d prefer to keep busy.”

“Good. Because we’re one officer short while Jaghide is recuperating, and we need everybody we can get to work Cat Pride this weekend. Except for Delgato, who is taking a personal day.” Nick fleetingly wondered if Bogo knew that Peter was actually MCing that night at a jungle bar burlesque show, “Kitty-Kitty Bang-Bang.” He’d invited Nick and Judy before. You’d never recognize him on the posters, but he looked positively fabulous as the vampy snow leopard, Ice Printsess.

“Wilde,” Bogo intoned solemnly, snapping Nick back into eye contact. “I can’t say I’m surprised that you knew a mammal that attacked one of my officers,” he said, as Nick’s stomach took a sharp quarter-turn. The last thing he needed was for “knowing everybody” to become a pitfall instead of an asset.

“But I’ll remind you that you’re also one of my officers now,” Bogo continued, blithely shifting a stack of papers to the side as Nick’s internal organs slowly righted themselves. “As you know, the department provides counseling to any officer involved in deadly use of force. Considering your connection to the case, you’re welcome to the same service.” The chief paused expectantly, hooves flat on his desk. Nick noticed that he’d just had his horns polished, their fissures buffed clean.

“I appreciate the gesture, sir.” It dawned on Nick that he was speaking with an alarming lack of sass.

Bogo took the hollow statement as it was intended. “I don’t blame you,” he confessed. “Not many people can sympathize with cops, except for other cops.” He leaned forward for emphasis, giving Nick the opportunity to admire the chief’s bony shine job. “Thankfully, you have one of those in your corner, too. Don’t forget that.” Satisfied with his professional wisdom, Bogo’s stern facade slid back into place, the empathy from a moment ago most likely a mirage.

Unbidden, Nick wondered what the chief would look like with a septum piercing.

“Couldn’t if I tried, sir.”  
—  
Judy hated domestic violence calls. Everybody did. This was the third time in two days.

(Calls about hyenas seemed to be the singular exception. They almost always answered the door together, abashed and apologetic, with a notarized consent agreement in hand. The night before, Nick had happily made small talk about ZPR podcasts while Judy carefully looked the contract over, as per her professional duty. Afterwards, Nick reminisced fondly about his time working the door at Knead, a popular hyena cuddle dungeon. He’d once managed to sell a whole crate of sable-fur gloves before last call.)

The neighbors tonight had reported a symphony of broken dishes, as conducted by one belligerent jackass. The donkey who answered the door did so while holding a microwave dinner against his swollen eye, the condensation dripping onto his tussled buttondown and well-fitted pinstripe pants. Their living room mantle was populated with smiling family photos of the lovely couple and their two well-groomed zenkey children. His zebra wife had sat on the couch with Judy, and fretted pitifully about the price of dental work. 

The donkey blamed overwork. After half an hour, the wife refused to show any interest in pressing charges. Besides, their kids had school in the morning.

“He kissed her on the mouth!” Judy fumed. “The mouth he punched!”

She and Nick sat idling in a Bombardier Burger parking lot. The fronds of the Oasis Hotel and Casino glimmered emerald green as they jutted into the night clouds, illuminated by the full moon. “Mmph,” Nick mustered, his mouth otherwise occupied by a wildberry shake. Judy glared at him angrily. “How can you ‘mmph’ that?” she asked incredulously.

“I was there, Carrots.” He turned and tossed the completed shake towards the nearby compost bin. He missed. “Their kids asked me if I wanted to play Clawstation.”

“Don’t Carrots me right now, Nick.” Judy squeezed her paws against her eyelids and down her face, trying to manually squeeze the frustration out of her brain.

“Judy.” Nick said. The nerve-wracked bunny looked over at Nick. His hair glowed a soft amber in the mix of street and moon light. He held his face in one paw and stared out his window, away from Judy and in the direction of Oasis. “Sometimes you can only make _your_ world a better place.”

Part of Judy bristled. Ever since Tundratown, Nick’s trademark sidebars and jabs had been mixed with something more caustic.

“I’m proud of the life I’ve lived.” Judy looked up, surprised by the segue. “Not just this one. The one before.” Nick was looking forward now, gesturing angrily with one paw. “I fended for myself and hurt as few people as possible. How many prey do you know that could say the same?” His muzzle vibrated with discontent.

“Nick.” Judy had been giving him space for days, only to watch him dig himself deeper down the rabbit hole. She reached over and put a paw on his shoulder. He tensed momentarily, but Judy’s paw stayed. Nick breathed out, and his body softened. “Please tell me about Francis.” Nick rested his paws on his lap and massaged one with the other.

“I was young, and dumb.” Nick felt Judy’s face twitch, and rolled his eyes. “Dumb-er, fluff.” Judy’s temporary aversion to Nick’s nicknames didn’t reassert itself.

“I was just starting out, and didn’t know what I was doing. I did whatever I could think of, and I couldn’t think of much.” He looked over at Judy and shrugged, shaking her paw loose. It reestablished itself on his forearm. “I was selling counterfeit VIM passes around the hotels. Sometimes with fake credentials, sometimes as a spoiled rich kid who had to leave town unexpectedly. I looked older than I was,” he added parenthetically. His face stiffened. “I misread some marks. A couple of free-spendings rams in town on a business trip. They figured out that they’d been had, quicker than I expected. Caught up with me before I got too far. Cracked two ribs as they head-butted me into an alley.”

Judy moved her hand up Nick’s arm, and he flinched gently. She’d often teased him at night, asking him if all predators were so ticklish.

“Francis just happened to be walking by. His boss - Mr. Big’s predecessor, long story, another time - had sent him out for chinchilla food. He didn’t know the story, only that I was still a kit and they were three times my size.” He shook his head as the memory of the body at Tundratown flashed in his mind. “He was bigger then. Three times _their_ size. Backhanded one straight into a dumpster.”

Nick raised his face up and looked at Judy. He rested his paw on hers. “He didn’t ask for anything. He was just one of the big guys who tried to stick up for the little guy.”

Judy let the silence in the car fill the gaps in the story. It seemed like a healthy silence, like the moment in-between breaths.

“Mentor is a strong word,” Nick mused. “But I’d meet him around town, and he’d see to it that I’d stay safe.” He squeezed Judy’s paw. “Back when no one else did.”

The radio spit out static and check-ins. For once the ebb and flow of past few nights conspired in their favour. Judy furrowed her eyebrows. “What happened?” she asked. “To him?”

Nick shrugged. “He worked as muscle. It’s a full-contact sport.” His free paw traced a crescent shape along his thigh, from hip to knee. “A warthog took out a chunk of his leg that never healed properly.” He gripped his paw tightly and released. “Got his pad smashed by a rival family. It ached when it got cold. Which was always.”

He gestured to the milkshake free throw he botched earlier, as it seeped onto the ground. “He just put some cottontail in his tea, at first. Just to take the edge off. But you develop a tolerance.” Judy flashed back to Comparative Narcotics, where she had to memorize how equids will eat poison ivy for flavor but locoweed for fun; “cottontail” was the street name for a common prescription painkiller, although she had neglected to share that little nugget of an exam question with her parents. “They caught him skimming off a shipment. They would have skinned anyone else. Instead they sent him to sweat it out, at some Betsy Fjord clinic for hardhides.”

Judy began to rub the nape of Nick’s neck, and he didn’t protest. “Did you still see him?”

“I’d learned the ropes by then. Filled up my hustling dance card, I guess. Always told myself I’d make the time.” He sighed. “And then I didn’t. That was years ago.”

They sat in the car, a slim breeze of cool desert air circulating around them. They both stared out at the glittering rooftops and all-night casino buffets of Sahara Square, where a smorgasbord of budding bad decisions took shape at a comfortable distance. Judy looked for evidence of the simmering discontent from earlier, and came up empty.

“One more,” Judy prodded. Nick looked up expectantly. Judy squinted. “He never warned you about skunkbutt rugs?”

Nick chuckled despite himself. “Happened after his time. Maybe I wouldn’t have burned that bridge if he had still been around.”

“I’m glad you told me, Nick.”

“I’ve heard that before. I think I talk too much.”

Judy flicked Nick’s ear, which she knew he hated. “If you didn’t, I could never have hustled you in the first place.”

Nick suddenly glanced around the car in a mock-panic. “Fluff, if you recorded that…”

Judy laughed and shoved his face to the side. “You have my pen, skunkbutt.”

“That is not my new nickname.”

The radio spat a rude interruption. B&E in the Nocturnal District, officers with night vision requested. Pressing the car’s ignition switch, Judy glanced slyly at Nick. “I’ll get lost down there. I’ll have to hold on to your tail.” Nick buckled himself in and looked out the window again, but this time to hide his smirk. “You’re such a tease,” he murmured.

Judy turned out of the parking lot while Nick pulled out their logbook. He pulled out Judy’s pen from his breast pocket and put it to paper. His paw remained motionless, as a prickly thought took shape.

“…When’s the last time we visited little Judy?”


	6. Chapter 6

Their next days off lay on the other side of pride weekend, but Nick and Judy managed to power through the gauntlet of striped flags and box parades without too many scratches. A teenage tiger had smoothly wrapped her tail around Nick’s outside Purr Bar, while Judy did nothing. She claimed that she hadn’t noticed because she’d been too busy chatting with Delgato about his furcare regimen. She lied.

You didn’t have to twist Judy’s ear to visit her goddaughter, but it was hard to get away. She’d casually neglected to inform Bogo about the conflict of interests that might come from being penciled into a local crime boss’ family tree. Nick heard Judy Big squeaking excitedly in the parlor down the hall, as her namesake played peekaboo with her under the brim of her ZPD cap.

Kevin and Raymond hadn’t seemed especially stunned by news of Francis, although getting a read on polar bears was an acquired skill; you only knew that you’d really shocked them when you got them to blink once more per minute. Nick had counted an extra one and a quarter when he’d told them how he’d gone out, going whole hog on top of a hippo cop. Francis may have worked as muscle, but their job description typically involved ending fights, not starting them.

It still bothered Nick that all the bears he’d spoken to had taken Francis’ circumstances as a given. None of them seemed interesting in elaborating on what happened after he’d been sent to clean up, and they seemed oddly standoffish about having let him go so far off the rails. But asking intrusive questions to ursine strongpaws rarely ended well, so Nick had come up a bit short on satisfying answers.

He overheard Judy’s glee as Mr. Big’s daughter showed off her latest leopard print jeggings, which allowed Judy to make an easy segue into the story about the tiger tail from this weekend. Nick zipped up his John Jackalskin jacket that he’d bought expressly for these little off-the-books tundra trips and looked out into Mr. Big’s arctic garden. He entertained the image of Judy’s father waxing enthusiastically about plant husbandry with the greenhoof caribou gardener.

One thing he liked about polar bears was how surprisingly stealthy they could be. He tried to convince himself that this was a good thing as an ample paw thumped onto his shoulder, its owner blotting out the late afternoon sun.

“Good to see you, Nick.” The looming, contralto greeting contrasted sharply with Kevin's raspy baritone.

“You too, Katja.” Nick tried his best to turn around while still bearing the weight of her paw. “I take it you’ve heard.”

“Word gets around.” Katja huffed, the waning sun accenting the silhouette of her panther black Boarberry suit. The family had gone through three tailors before they found one that could muster an acceptable high-quality wardrobe for a discerning ladybear. Nick scooted over as she joined him, resting her treetrunk forelimbs on the balcony. “Francis was a good bear.”

“Was.” Nick shook his head, incredulous. He craned his neck upward at an uncomfortable angle and tried to tamp down the scent of interrogation in his voice. “What on earth happened, Katja? He was supposed to be taken care of.”

“Things got complicated.” Boilerplate mobster stoicism. But, for once, she kept going. “He’d do OK, but then he’d check himself out. Would you stand in his way?”

Nick wasn’t entirely sure if even a brick wall could have done that.

“We’d pick him up again. He’d complain about their rules.” The tips of Katja’s fur perked up as Judy Big screamed, and relaxed again as the scream quickly evolved into a chorus of giggles. She shrugged, and Nick felt the balcony creak as it bore less weight for a split-second. “And then he started complaining about other things.”

Nick felt like Judy standing next to Yax at the naturalist club, and refrained from doing something that might derail the narrative.

Katja stared out and past the garden’s ice sculptures. “One day we found him swimming in the park. He barked every time he came up for air. Barked, Nick.” Nick tried to picture a battle-scarred bear channeling his inner timber wolf. “He told me he was 95% leopard seal. He said it was the most leopard seal he’d ever been.”

The surrealism hung suspended in the chill air, and Nick let it cool for a beat. His mouth opened a fraction of an inch and closed again, his brow furrowing in the direction of the immaculately-pruned lichen maze. “I…” Nick started, and had to reset once more. He blinked in defeat. “I have no idea what that means.”

“There were issues on top of everything else, Nick. Or underneath it.” Katja glanced down at Nick, her muzzle firmly set. “His habit just brought it to the surface.”

Nick fit that latest jigsaw piece into his mental puzzle, but the overall picture remained unchanged. It just made the missing pieces even more infuriating.

“I don’t see how that changes anything,” he vented. Nick threw up his paws with frustration, extending one pad at a forty-five degree angle towards Katja’s chest. “He was one of your guys.”

“He was one of our _bjørn_.” Katja shifted as she took a moment to tug on the cuffs of her suit. “We look after our fur, Nick. But we’re not always that great with what goes on inside it.” Nick pulled the same face as when Judy tried to make the ridiculous argument that Bruce Springbok was overrated. He watched as she rolled her eyes in the direction of the bear standing by the gate. “The guys were afraid they would ‘catch cold,’” Katja muttered, seemingly to herself. Nick’s face didn’t change.

Katja stared down at him for a few moments, wondering how a fox could be clever while still being so slow. “They think it’s infectious, Nick.”

Nick couldn’t help but balk. Mobster bodyguards were afraid? Of what? That Francis’ voices would sneak out of his head at night and break into theirs?

“Katja,” Nick intoned slowly. “That’s _insane_.”

“It’s _tradition_ ,” Katja sneered. She gestured behind them, off the veranda and into the Mr. Big omniplex. “A lot of these guys are hired straight out of the glaciers. I grew up in Tundratown, but I never saw a doctor as a kid. My father would stack ice blocks on top of me to treat mange.” Katja lolled her head to one side in a gesture of bare concession. “There’s nothing like cold shrubgrass tea to fend off a fever. But I wouldn’t call it modern medicine.”

Nick felt his analytical hustle grow murky with foreign concepts. He rubbed one side of his snout with his paw, as if that would help. He made a mental note to ask Judy if there were any rabbit traditions which made no damn sense, but of which he should still be made aware. He had a sudden image of carrot enemas, and shuddered.

“Thank you, Katja.” Nick had to give her that much. “But I’m not sure if knowing all of this has made things any better,” he commented morosely.

Katja raised herself off the balcony banister, smoothing out microscopic wrinkles from her suit as she did. “It won’t.” She lumbered back towards the house, and Nick watched as a grown rabbit walked past the glass doors in front of her, a happy baby shrew nestled snugly in her breast pocket. “But that’s never stopped you before.”  
—  
“The Carrot Stalk. The Beet Root. Twin Ears.” Judy ticked off the names as she traced her phone across the sky at arm’s length. She tilted the screen so that the rear camera pointed towards just below the horizon. “And there’s the Hungry Fox.” She elbowed Nick in the ribs, smirking. “It will only come out after midnight.”

“I can’t believe your people named a constellation after me,” Nick preened, playing along. Judy’s starmap app had dozen of different settings, for dozens of different species’ mythologies. The sky for hamsters seemed to consist entirely of one big intergalactic dance party, for some reason.

“Well, we certainly couldn’t have called it the Clever Fox, could we.” Nick sighed in defeat as Judy as Judy rested the phone on her lap. They huddled together for warmth on the bench overlooking the skate park in Fishtown Market. “Seeing the stars is one of the things I miss most about living in Bunnyburrow,” Judy said, fondly.

They diverted their attention to a band of moose teens, racing by in a flash of hockey sticks. A young buck smashed the puck towards the corner of the net, and the goalie managed to fall to the ice and deflect it with his antlers. The stickler of the group called a penalty.

Judy drew her head down into her jacket, leaving only her cheeks and eyes exposed to the cold as she breathed warmth into her cocoon. “What a week,” she exhaled.

“Mm,” Nick agreed. His muzzle was beginning to chill, and he was afraid that anything he could have said would come across in a numb slur.

“Nick, you can’t dwell on it forever,” came the muffled reply. Judy’s eyes glanced up from her makeshift den. Nick nodded. “I know,” he managed to say.

“It’d be nice to have a normal weekend for once. We can be normal, right?” Nick eyed her warily, as she suppressed a laugh from beneath a layer of down. “I’m serious,” she mustered, all while looking like a toasty burrito with ears.

“We can try,” Nick allowed. He nodded his head towards the subway entrance, and they both creaked their bones into motion and towards the welcome warmth waiting underground. Judy waddled down the stairs as if she were an especially chilled platypus. “What did you have in mind?” Nick ventured, as he pulled off his gloves.

Judy peeked her head back out of Burritoburrow, revealing that cursed smile of hers. Nick braced for the inevitable punchline.

“Well…” Judy probed, grinning. “You did get a flyer under your door yesterday.”


	7. Chapter 7

A fleet of street sweepers and dump trucks dotted the massive parking lot, abutting the gigantic municipal depot that bookended the side street that jutted off Clawbourne Avenue. The locked wire fence was dotted with a unkempt dune of windswept litter. A giraffe bike sat joined to a graffiti-tagged “No Parking” sign with a weatherbeaten U-lock; the bike seat itself towered over the sign by a dozen feet.

“Welp,” Nick grinned down at Judy, his paw cupping her far shoulder, draped as it was in her ‘fancy’ flannel. “It appears we’ve arrived.”

A car slowly turned off Clawbourne, and slowly crawled to a halt outside an unassuming, two-story clapboard house. It was the only non-industrial building within a hundred yards. A pawwritten sign - hung at an angle in the front window, seemingly scrawled in black ink with a thick claw - read simply, “Hideaway.” The tiny band of hedgehogs, many of their quills stained the color of melted crayon, disembarked their Zuber and toddled up the front steps. A hodgepodge of electronic squeaks and intermammalian chatter escaped out the front door as they let themselves inside.

“I’m not sure what I expected,” Judy said, both nonplussed but skeptical. She glanced again at the flyer in her hand, the words “THE WATERING HOLE” splayed across the top in a glossy, chaotic font, which spilled below into a graphic design mosh pit: an array of rainbow mandalas revolving around a photograph of a beer tap, from which poured a river of heart and kiss emojis. On the roster of DJs, second billing from the bottom, sat the name “DJ Psykada.”

“Congratulations, Carrots. We’re not just normal tonight.” Nick hugged Judy to his Musk-Off’d frame as they strode forward towards their eagerly-anticipated evening plans. “We’re hip.” He held his free paw to his chest and pointed down to Judy’s face as she patiently glowered up at him. He forced a cool grin, like the Frondz. “ _Aaayyyyy!_ ”

“Do I know you? No. No, I don’t.” Judy backhanded Nick in the belly as she hopped away up the stairs, swallowing a smile. She grabbed hold of the door handle and pushed. For a split second, she couldn’t help but note that this was blatantly against fire codes.

“Hey, guys!” said the chipper ram seated at the folding table in front of them. An uncomfortable amount of styling cream had forced his muttonchops into solid bricks of wool that resembled lightning bolts. His left horn sported an artificial hole near the tip, in which he’d somehow permanently affixed a kaleidoscope; from where Nick and Judy was standing, you could see a fractal image of wall behind him. Nick honestly didn’t understand the appeal.

“It’s pay-what-you-can,” the ram said helpfully, gesturing to the sign above his head. It listed three tiers of suggested cover charges: Real Job, Crap Job, and “Artist (We Believe in You).” Nick gave a humble shrug towards Judy as he reached for his wallet, knowing full-well that she hadn’t paid this much for the Bunnyburrow county fair last month.

He glanced over into the bar at the same time. He observed a porcupine patiently standing in front of a ramshackle booth, which sported a screenprinted banner that read, “Adaptive Dancing Squad.” A team of tiny otters and hedgehogs in matching spangly vests were in the process of painstakingly affixing cork stoppers to each of the porcupine’s quills. Behind them stood a dingo with a fuschia mohawk, who was busy carefully strapping what looked like a tiny boxing ring to her shoulder while making pleasantries with the jerboa standing in its center. The dingo wore a nametag that read, “Surrogate Size-ologist.”

The ram took Nick’s money and reached before the counter with his other hoof. “Thanks!” he bleated genuinely. “Now you get to choose your trait!” And with that, Kaleidoram pulled out a reusable Trader Doe’s grocery bag. Inside, a cacophony of disembodied animal parts stared back wordlessly at Nick and Judy. “Don’t worry,” the ram consoled them. “They’re sterilized.”

Judy wordlessly picked up a pair of plastic buffalo horns. She glanced wide-eyed at the ram. Then to Nick. Then back to the ram. Nick pursed his lips thoughtfully:

“…Explain.”

“Oh! It’s something that we do at all our parties. So for example, you could pick…” Muttonbolt fished around purposefully. “A bunny tail!” he declared triumphantly, placing a clip-on fluff of cotton on the table in front of Nick. “And I know we have a fox muzzle in here somewhere,” the ram added helpfully, towards an increasingly starry-eyed Judy. “It’s just to weed out the people who take themselves too seriously,” the ram concluded. “We’re all mammals here!”

Nick paused, and looked down at Judy beside him. Her eyes had grown wide and pleading, almost glistening. Her little rabbit nose quivered adorably.

“You’re not really going to cry if I don’t go along with this,” Nick hoped out loud, helplessly.

“TRY ME.”  
—  
Nick stumbled out the side door, feeling mildly rank with sweat and odor. He gently peeled off the faux tail off his real one, and stuck it to the door jam to prop it open. A muffled symphony of youthful barks and bleats pulsed through the side wall into the alley as he pressed his back against the wall and wiped his brow with his tie. He contemplated how he could still get this winded after boot camp when, from within the bar, he was almost positive that he heard a bunny try to baaaah.

The door popped open again. “Hey, Nick.” The round-eared marsupial stepped into the alley, carefully shutting the door behind her. “Thanks again for coming.”

“We told you we would, Hadley.” Nick deepened his breathing as he tried to cool off. “You did great.”

“Really? Because I thought I screwed up the transition between the Moletown and pouchbop tracks mid-set, and…”

“You did fine, Hadley.”

Hadley patted down the length of her resplendently-patched jumpsuit until she found what she was looking for. “And, ah, I wasn’t sure I heard you right when you talked to me at the booth. But I think you said…”

“I don’t mean to assume,” Nick politely countered.

“I feel like I should ask if you’re a cop,” Hadley shrugged, drawing two freshly rolled papers out of one pocket. “But that seems kind of pointless.”

“We’re allowed to lie about that, you know,” Nick pointed out. “But besides, you’re not selling me a bushel. Take it from me,” Nick smirked. “I know the law.”

“I’m not selling you anything, after how you warded off Ms. Snoutburrow. I’m just saying….” Hadley waffled one paw anxiously. “I…I may have added a little New Zooland millipede dust to the nip. Like, just a pinch.” Nick looked down his snout at the flustered dropbear in front of him. “It’s not illegal!” Hadley hastened to add, fumbling. “I mean, they haven’t made any laws against it, at least.” Nick facepawed, sympathetically. “It doesn’t even do enough to be regulated. Just adds a few tracers and bubbles to your buzz, and I like to do it after a stressful set. I’ll stop talking now.” Nick shook his head, smiling, as Hadley fidgeted.

“Well, I do love loopholes,” he said, gently plucking a paper from Hadley’s open paw.

Nick was so stranger to a little self-medication now and again, although he hadn’t felt the urge in ages. Compartmentalization was one thing, but you could only maintain enough poker faces to hide your panic of a con gone wrong without needing to unwind somehow, usually during a nap under a cypress tree. And as much as he agreed with Judy that he shouldn’t dwell, he figured that the past week or two of processing Francis’ death could use a rare chemical assist.

Hadley offered him a light and they both leaned back to enjoy the moment. They’d been neighbors for a year, but they’d never actually seen each other outside a ten-foot stretch of hallway. “How long have you been…playing?” Nick asked. Hadley twitched as she kept herself from correcting him with the proper verb.

“I built my own deck when I was still in secondary school.” Hadley exhaled a faint wisp of smoke and shrugged. “Tried to go to school for botany to make my parents happy, but I always spent my book allowance on records.”

Nick laughed. “Parents must have loved that,” he sniffed. At least Judy’s parents had seen her dreams coming.

“We moved from Oztailia when I was seven, when my father got a job as a brushfire manager with the Prairie Council. My stepmum worked as a teacher at a Wildorf school.” Nick suppressed his complete lack of surprise. “They’re totally supportive, really great. I just wish they wouldn’t worry about me so much.”

Nick felt a paternal observation rising to the surface, and gently kicked himself. He held in the minty freshness for a moment and decided to blame the bunny. “Judy tells her parents the same thing,” he exhaled.

Hadley shook her head, smiling. “She’s amazing, Nick. If I ever stop seeing her, I won’t be happy with you.”

“Neither would I,” Nick admitted sweetly.

“She reminds me of my stepmum,” Hadley remarked.

Nick partly blamed his wonderment on the nip. “You mean the relentless pep, or the sterling but semi-flexible morals? Either way, I’m so sorry.”

“No, I mean she looks just like her.”

Nick glanced sidelong at the koala, letting his arched eyebrow do the talking for him.

“That’s part of why we moved,” Hadley shrugged. “It had never gone over too well in the bush. Even with my aunt, my dad’s brother. She hated two kinds of people: bigots, and rabbits.” The fox and the bepouched nerd looked at each other and snorted in concert. “How does that even work?” Hadley lamented with practiced mirth.

The door opened, suddenly. The collective musk and sounds of vineswing erupted into the open air. Nick couldn’t be entirely sure, but for a second he could have sworn that the trombone notes looked like sapphire triangles. He blinked away the novel concept as he and the koala took in the lumbering mass stepping into the alley, its teeth glittering in the faint light like unflossed bowling pins.

“Nick,” the hippo blinked. “I thought that was you.” He and Nick stared at each other, over an oblivious yet still anxious koala. “Didn’t take you for a hipfur.”

Nick took a moment to congratulate himself on his recent pharmaceutical life choices. “Didn’t take you for a pouchbop fan either, Jaghide.”

“Private. Owner wants a bouncer from time to time. I don’t see any of these kids handling trouble themselves. No offense,” he added towards Hadley, who nodded smartly. Jaghide took in the scene wordlessly for an extra second. “You can exhale, kid. Smells legit to me.” Hadley slowly did as she was instructed, unblinking.

Nick surveyed Jaghide at an angle, noting the freshly-removed stitches as his fist rested on his belt, a paw’s width from his holstered stun gun. “Didn’t expect you to be up and working so soon, Karl.”

“Nick, listen.” Jaghide shifted his weight, as if the impending chat gave him an itch. “I heard you knew the guy,” he explained, as Nick made a mental note to add hot peppers to Ben’s next pastry delivery. Karl continued to gruffly disregard the need for eye contact. “I’m not going to judge, but you should know it was nothing personal. I didn’t sign up for what happened, but I’ve got a wife and two kids. Him or me. You know how it’s gotta be.” Karl nodded, having passed his heart-to-heart confessional like a difficult stool. Nick basked in the awkwardness, as the shadow underneath Jadhide’s snout seemed to pulse imperceptibly. Nick focused back on reality.

“I appreciate it, Karl,” Nick soothed, disingenuously. The tip of his ear twitched, subconsciously. His nose soaked in Jaghide’s swampy, macho musk.

They all stood in place without speaking, as a stampede of stylish hooves pounded the floorboards inside.

Jaghide nodded, abruptly. “Well. Good talk.” The door opened to unleash a flood of trumpets that tasted like honeyed metal, which made slightly more sense to Nick than the triangles. The door closed shut, as Nick’s rabbit posterior came unstuck and fell roughly to the ground.

Nick zeroed in on the errant, dirtied fluffball as he kept his breathing steady. Jaghide’s attempts at empathy felt like a happy ending from a wolverine masseuse.

Hadley slowly raised her paw. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said quietly, pointing. “But if you’re not going to finish that, I could totally use a round two.”  
—  
At some point, Judy had swapped out her muzzle for a lion’s mane. She’d tried to take it home with her, unsuccessfully.

“I can’t believe you got locked out,” she laughed. “You missed the conga line! And the porcupine did the worm!” She skipped her way down to the corner where they called the Zuber, her ears standing at perky attention.

Nick mustered a smile and ruffled her head, knocking her ears to and fro. “At least you had Hadley to keep you company,” she offered playfully. Nick shrugged weakly, as they made their way down the street past an array of parked bicycles (and one unicycle).

Judy slowed her pace to match his, scrutinizing his whiskers like tea leaves. “Nick.” The fox widened one eye expectantly, as Judy’s face began to deflate with a glum acceptance. She looked up at Nick’s subpar poker face, and sighed with a half-half blend of worry and annoyance. She looked down and began to run her paws along the edges of Nick’s tie. “Crackers,” she miffed. “I had hoped you hadn’t seen him.”

Nick felt a fuzzy tide of thankfulness nestle around his gloomy edges. Smiling despite himself, he drew Judy into his belly and leaned down to kiss the base of each ear. “Don’t worry about it, fluff,” he said, as a badger piloted a silver grey RAM4 to a stop beside them. The sound of tires against loose pebbles gave off a scent of fermenting raspberries, a sensation that Nick was sure at this point didn’t actually exist. Nick opened the back door for Judy and welcomed her, smiling, inside.

“Do you want space tonight?” Judy queried kindly.

Nick shook his head. “No, dear,” he whispered. “My pillow makes a terrible spoon,” he complained, gently kicking her heel.

“Sap.” Up front, the badger looked back impatiently, and with minimal eye-rolling. “So. My place?” Judy inquired as she buckled in.

Nick stared out at the road ahead of them, quietly. His nose twitched imperceptibly. Judy watched as her fox wrestled unnecessarily with an easy question.

“Tundra Parkway and Glacier,” Nick said.


	8. Chapter 8

The badger pulled a sharp K-turn in the snow, quietly fuming about his lack of snow tires. Nick and Judy watched patiently as he slowly rolled away, one claw tapping away at his GPS, as their cheeks tingled in the crisp twilight. Judy had at least convinced Nick to swing by her place to grab some district-appropriate clothing, which now seemed like the most sensible choice that had been made in the past hour.

“Well.” Judy nodded, faintly concealing her encroaching exhaustion. She had not planned for a late-night arctic foray after a night of fevered snoutjazz (or whatever subgenre). Nor had she and Nick had much of a chance to discuss the plan in front of a hectic, coffee-fueled badger.

“I’m not sure what I’m thinking,” Nick admitted at last. He turned to Judy and squatted down onto his hunches, so that his muzzle was level with Judy’s subtle buck teeth. His possum-wool scarf flicked gently against Judy’s chest in an errant breeze. “But, between the two of us…” Nick shook his head, trying to hit upon the honest truth. “I’m asking you to be the better cop right now,” he pleaded.

Judy took Nick’s muzzle in both of her gloved paws, and stared down the length of Nick’s face and into his sly, gentle eyes. She rubbed the top of his nose serenely, as a sparkled dervish of snow blew past their feet. “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” she smirked.

Nick pulled down Judy’s cap over her eyes as he stood to his full height. He turned and wandered over to the same stretch of forlorn road that they’d last seen almost two weeks ago.

Freshly-fallen snow smoothed out all but the faintest edges around the trough of snow where Francis had lain. The slushy spread of blood had been dutifully scooped up and disposed up, but spots of faded crimson still dotted their way across the street underneath a fresh layer of ice. Nick and Judy paced the length of the scene from end to end for a few minutes, scrutinizing the ground aimlessly. From where Jaghide had reclined on the curb, Nick thought for a moment that he picked up a trace of the hippo’s off-putting aroma. He glumly realized that he was projecting his hopes onto virgin snow.

“Anything?” Judy raised her voice to Nick, from next to a pillar whose cracks had epoxied themselves with faint blue ice. Nick looked over and shook his head, his unformed hunch fragile and fleeting.

“OK,” Judy declared, striding across the road and grabbing Nick by the paw. “Executive decision.” She dragged Nick over to the ghost of a trough. “You were standing here,” Judy said as she positioned Nick smartly. “And me, here.” She turned to Nick expectantly. “Talk it out.”

“What are we doing here, Judy.” Nick felt the worrisome absurdity of his impulsive detour close in on him like a late evening fog.

“Nope. Nope.” Judy took two long strides over and smacked Nick around his belt in a rhythmic percussion of indulgent paws. “Drag me out to Tundratown in the middle of the night, I’ll forgive that. Eventually.” She grabbed Nick by the waist of his pants and shook him with an impressive amount of force. “But we’re finishing what we’ve started. Now.” She glared up with finality. “What’s the first thing you remember.”

“The smell.” Nick thought back to that wretched aroma of sizzled fur as it mingled with the scent of copper. The red pandas who lived on the floor below him couldn’t go a week without cooking up a noxious soup of fermented fish that they followed up with durian smoothies, the horrific riot of scents seeping up through his floorboards, and even that didn’t compare. “It smelled,” he echoed again.

“I know. I could hardly stand it, either.” Nick and Judy shared a look, as they commiserated over the macabre subject matter that occupied their days but which followed them into the rest of their lives. Nick’s nose reflexively sniffed at the memory.

He blinked. Nick’s mind tugged at a loose thread in the tangled mess of his thoughts, like Delgato after a yarn rave.

“You’ve been tased, right?” Nick questioned, trying to guide the idea bubbling up inside him. “During training.” The whole class had laughed because Nick had yipped like a kit, but they quickly moved on from that after a giant rhino had screamed like a mama goat going into labour.

“Sure. I had to cut off the dots of burned hair with a nail clipper. I thought about saving it as a memento.”

“Unexpectedly hardcore and a little creepy, but let’s table that for now.” Nick gestured back and forth from where they were standing to the empty space in front of them. “When we were here that night, did it smell more or less than what you experienced?”

“About the same, I’d guess,” Judy conjectured.

“While standing a few feet away.”

Judy stared at Nick. Nick stared back. Overhead, they heard a late-night eighteen-wheeler rumble over a pothole, its cargo chirping sharply.

“OK.” Judy spun around on her heels, resuming her position from that night. “Facts first.” Nick stood at rapt attention.

“We saw the taser leads. We’re not disputing that Jaghide used it.” Nick nodded. “Our tasers only pack a single-shot. Jaghide turned his in afterward.” Nick nodded again, more slowly.

“Did you see, anywhere else on Francis’ body, any kinds of burns?” Judy turned to Nick, her paws outstretched and her nose just beginning to pale from the cold.

“No,” Nick agreed. “But he was on his back.” 

“So we’re hypothesizing that Francis had some other kind of burn, from another source. Which we think might be, somehow, relevant to the case.” Nick’s moment of revelatory enthusiasm began to temper around the edges, albeit slightly, in the onslaught of caveats. A fraction of a moment later, Judy also realized that she’d referred to their unsanctioned, post-clubbing brainstorming session as part of “the case.”

“Could Francis have burned himself?” Judy forged on. “I mean…well, while getting by. Keeping warm.” Judy rubbed her paws together for warmth herself, as her cop brain dialed down a few ticks to make room for something more personal. “Or not,” she hedged. She walked over and stood at Nick’s side, as they both gazed into the snow. She sighed. “We know he wasn’t quite in a position to take care of himself, Nick.”

“I don’t know,” Nick confessed. He raised his eyes and took a good look around him. “He should never have been out here.” The bank edged upwards to the hug the support columns of the overpass, the snow blanketed with a thin crust of ice which reflected the bare light of the street. It looked even more barren and featureless than when they were here before. The neon of Fishtown Market flickered in the distance, unmoved.

He’d just begun to sense a budding pang of remorse when he heard the subtle crunch of snow under tiny, restless feet. He watched in silence as Judy clamored through a half-foot of powder, climbing at a steep angle.

“But he wasn’t out here,” Judy said as she ascended to a pocket of dimmer ice. Without looking back, she punched through the thin curtain that had accrued over Francis’ discretely-placed spider-hole. “He was in here.” Nick saw a glimmer of light from Judy’s phone as she vanished inside.

Nick called out as he stumbled after her. “Carrots, be careful! I don’t think Francis had a chance to tidy up.” He pawed his way through the climb as the phone’s glow danced in different directions. He’d just arrived at the lip of the freshly-renovated entrance when a tightly-clenched paw emerged from the shadows. Not for the first time, Nick was strangely impressed that Judy carried a clean sandwich bag wherever she went. 

“I don’t think he was the only one who wanted to get clean,” Judy uttered flatly, as the carefully-bagged stun gun swung to and fro.


	9. Chapter 9

The afternoon sun snuck through one of Judy’s modest, ground-level windows, onto the weatherbeaten wooden door on cinder blocks that she called a coffee table. In the decades since it’d been built, the “historically charming” building had steadily settled a full inch and a half into the soil beneath the questionable foundation, slowly squeezing shut the apartment’s view into the outside/surface world. Another few decades more, and her view could be legally advertised as an ant farm.

Nick handed over Judy’s blueberry smoothie as he took a seat next to her on the couch with a steaming mason jar of boysenberry tea. He calmly evaluated the taser on the table in front of them, which sported a convenient label which read in boxy black font: “If Found, Please Return to: Nicolas P. Wilde, Dumb Fox Extraordinaire.” When she first bought that label maker, Judy had labeled all his shirts the same way.

Nick’s sipped his tea and turned his muzzle a fraction, and stared down instead at the unlabeled, unmarked stun gun sitting innocently in a plastic sandwich baggie. Both came out to roughly the same size, shape and heft, although the latter sported two tiny immobile metal prongs. The difference took away the helpful, peacekeeping advantage of having a distance weapon, but made up for its loss by becoming multi-use.

“A lot of the guys customize their gear,” Judy took a gulp of her smoothie as she toyed absently with the label still clinging to the hem of the shirt she was wearing. “Delgato modded his taser with orange and black LEDs.”

“That’s both precious, and not the same as taking an entire extra weapon into the field.”

“You know how often the guys complain about the lemons we’re issued?” Judy continued, as a wildly unconvincing devil’s advocate. “Grizzoli once had to catch a cab back from a drunk and disorderly. A business of ferrets stole his tires, but left an angry note telling him that the rest wasn’t fit for scrap.”

“So Jaghide wanted a second piece as a security blanket?” Nick fell back into the couch, and tried to take what felt like an angry swig of tea. “And then he had to Tail Mary it into Francis’ living room so no one would find it. That poor darling. I bet he misses it.”

Judy slouched to the side and rested her feet across Nick’s legs, her ears slumped. “We don’t have proof that it’s Jaghide’s.”

“Because ex-mob polar bears always keep a stun gun next to their hotplate,” Nick fumed. This tea’s ‘fur-sooth’ branding was a filthy lie.

“We don’t have the evidence, Nick.” Judy left the label alone and began to vigorously massage one of her temples. “Even if he did use it for whatever happened with Francis. Right now, all we have is a piece of unauthorized gear…”

Nick closed his eyes and dropped his snout to his chest. “…That we only found while moonlighting on a case…”

“…That doesn’t actually belong to us,” Judy concluded, dejectedly.

“For the record, that is the last time we’re completing each other’s sentences.”

“The day’s still young, fox.”

Both sat back into the ratty couch with the hideous houndstooth upholstery, sinking into its dusty depths. Judy swore that she’d invest in real furniture one day, once she’d finished sending money back home to help with her siblings’ educations. In only thirty years, by her reckoning.

Nick rubbed Judy’s feet, which was not a tiny task on a rabbit. “It’s not Tundratown,” he bargained in advance. “But you may want to grab a sweater,” he proposed, as Judy’s wireless baby monitor buzzed atop her kitchenette counter. In stark contrast to the fridge and radiator, the monitor sounded remarkably like a hungry mole-rat with colic.

“Fine,” Judy agreed, reaching for her phone. “But first I get to watch Ursula give Octavia her afternoon feeding.”  
—  
The unkempt anteater flicked through the array of manila folders, the length of its snout echoing softly as it absentmindedly clicked its tongue. Judy tried to casually avert her eyes from anything that seemed particularly morbid or upsetting. This had proved difficult, as she was pretty sure that elephant on the cold metal slab in the back was missing half his trunk.

The sloth-cousin huffed a tiny breath of triumph as he drew forth a file whose tab read, “Fangsson, Francis.” “Here we are,” he emitted in a strained wheeze. He opened the folder flat onto his desk and took another long slurp from a deluxe juice box of Hi-Colony. He perused the file leisurely until coming to a halt halfway down the page. “Wilde and Hopps?” he confirmed needlessly, squinting through his Scutum taped glasses. Both nodded politely as Nick slapped on his most obsequious hustler smile.

“It doesn’t appear that you’re the officers assigned to this case,” the anteater deflected skeptically.

“Yes, well…” Nick watched with barely-contained pride as Judy ratcheted up her good-golly country bumpkin act. “Nick here hates to admit it, but his therapist told him it could help him move on.” Judy folded her hands at her waist and let her ears fall adorably to the sides. “I just hate seeing him mope through our patrols. And Chief Bogo did say he was welcome to counseling.”

Judy gazed up and over at Nick with such endearing, folksy concern that Nick made careful note to mock her mercilessly for it as soon as he had the chance. Nick then ran an emotional lateral, and now did his best to look like he was brooding. He remembered the armadillo at Hideaway who’d dyed his scales black and spent the night rolling from side to side in the corner, and he tried to channel that.

“Tell him he can mope all he wants, Oscar,” came a voice from over by the skin beetle colony. A svelte reindeer closed the lid tightly and wandered over to Nick and Judy, leaving behind a heap of decayed flesh that, at Nick’s best guess, was ten percent raccoon but ninety percent ghoul. The reindeer stepped primly to the desk, their antlers cutting a bony web through the florescent lights. “They still can’t see Mr. Fangsson.”

Nick put on his best airs of hard-pressed endurance. “I understand, doctor,” Nick said (he hadn’t been entirely sure whether to go with “Sir” or “Ma’am,” and the ungulate’s ID badge sported an ambiguous “Lichstone, Eli,” so Nick had thought it best to run straight up the middle.) “It’s just that I’ve been having some terrible nightmares,” he laid it on thickly, “and I thought…”

“I said ‘can’t,’ not ‘won’t.’” The reindeer stood stiffly with their arms crossed, as the anteater shuffled off. “If seeing him was that important to you, you should have come sooner.” Nick and Judy stole a worried glance at one another, needling the crime lab regent into being even more direct. “He’s gone.”

The brusque hatrack spun around on their hooves and wandered over to the array of metal drawers that took up an entire wall. Lichstone grabbed hold of one handle - attached to a chamber that seemed barely big enough to hold Judy’s phone - and pulled. They stepped far enough out of the way so that Judy and Nick could both properly appreciate the light blue hue of a prostrate dormouse.

“Unclaimed polar bears from open-and-shut cases don’t have the luxury of getting comfortable,” Lichstone said as they closed the drawer with a gentle hiss. “I can fit a dozen other mammals in that space, like Mr. Redwall here. And I doubt any of them ended up on my table after attacking an officer.”

Nick almost barked a retort, but Judy kindly cut him off at the pass. “But, if he’s gone…” Judy pressed one last time. “Where did he go?”

“The same place all unclaimed mammals go,” the reindeer shrugged as they walked away. “Memorial Gardens.”


	10. Chapter 10

Katja stabbed her fork into the pink flesh for emphasis. “Not happening,” she declared in a definitive rumble. Nick watched as the polar bear delivered the last flecks of halibut to her mouth, chewing pensively. Not to be prejudiced, but something about making eye contact with a bear while they ate made Nick uneasy. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to become overly familiar with the experience.

“Come on, Katja,” Nick cajoled in dulcet tones across the silken tabletop. “I thought you didn’t believe in the spiritual smoke and mirrors.” While the food may have smelled delicious, Nick couldn’t help but feeling a little bit out of place in a place as tony as Toothfish. He’s pretty sure that caribou bartender’s watch cost most than his monthly rent, with utilities.

“Witchdoctors, no. But graveyards?” Katja made a silent signal to the immaculately-groomed muskox standing at attention by the bar. “Why press your luck?” Katja muttered to her empty plate, stained faintly with pale fish fluids.

Both fox and bear sat in silence as a crack team of suit-clad waiters cleared the table. In their wake, Nick quietly realized that they hadn’t received a check - the perks of Mr. Big’s expense account, as he recalled in a moment of wallet-shaming nostalgia.

“I can’t force you to come with,” Nick conceded. “After all, I like my head still attached to my body.” Katja huffed dismissively, immune to the flattery. Nick dialed back the “charm”, and opted instead for sheer sincerity. “It’s just…” he tried to explain, wearily. One paw meddled distractedly with the crease of his pants. “It’s just something that I’ve got to do,” he sighed.

The stoic ursine took a breath and exhaled, her sternum rumbling like the midnight train under Volehall Station.

“In the village,” she expounded slowly, “they would have built him a frostpyre on a sheet of ice and floated him out to sea. At least that has some dignity.” Nick saw her jaw muscles flex from across the table, rippling through her fur. “More than becoming plant food,” she muttered, to no one.

Nick didn’t know if polar bear funeral traditions varied on account of how the deceased might have passed, but he had thought it wise not to voice his suspicions in Katja’s presence. Among a long list of things he didn’t need, inspiring a blood feud between a Tundratown crime family and the police ranked somewhere between “genital rabies“ and “sloth doctor’s prostate exam.“

Katja stood, buttoning her bespoke suit. She looked down - way down - at Nick, and sighed.

“I can’t stop you from going, can I.”  
—  
Judy had been right: these kumara fries were amazing.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Judy asked again, reaching across the table for a dab of aioli. In one of their first bouts of good luck in the past few days, they’d managed to score the precious corner booth back at Grass Menagerie.

The previous night had made for a sober learning curve. Memorial Gardens had always sounded like a wonderful place in theory, but it took on a different pallor entirely while reading how Francis’ body - and all the evidence it may have contained - had been effectively mulched into oblivion, freeze-dried into powder and mixed with potting compost. The processed remains would probably serve as fabulous topsoil for a fine, noble birch tree. Maybe a pine. His little patch of forest would probably be a marvelous place to have a picnic one day.

“I’ve got a deadpan polar bear and a jaded beaver for company, what more could I need?” Nick enthused. Judy rolled her eyes and busied herself with another fry, dipping it into the side serving of mayonnaise like an unforgivable monster. “Maybe we’ll go to karaoke afterward. I bet Katja has some pipes on her.” 

“Don’t discount Lou,” Judy cautioned. “I’m not sure how Finnick ever compared.” Nick had exhibited remarkable fortitude as he listened to Judy and Ursula MuzzleTime on the couch while he made dinner last week, although he couldn’t argue with the extra blackmail material; Ursula had let slip that Lou had been a castoreum donor when he was younger, which even Nick hadn't known. Nick had been broke before, too, but he'd never stooped to squirting his musk into a cup.

“It does pay to know everybody,” Nick shrugged coyly. This went double for indebted climate engineers who had after-hours access to a garden cemetery whose fauna, by necessity, required a dozen distinct microclimates. And the new area where Francis had been - sown, Nick supposed, not buried - wouldn’t be open to the public for another several months, as they tended to the soil and let the plants take root. But it seemed a fair trade, in exchange for the last time that Flash had vanished Lou’s shoebox of unpaid parking tickets in record time: six to eight months.

Judy reached across the table to grasp Nick’s wrist, running her paw along the grain of his fur. “I still wish you’d let me come with you,” she murmured, her face filled with affection and barely-satiated fry lust.

Nick took Judy’s paw in his hand, and looked deep into her eyes with warmth and affection. “Carrots,” he said sweetly. “I’m a rookie fox cop, going off the radar, to visit my an old criminal friend’s grave, with the help of a pensioned city employee who still owes me from my hustling days, accompanied by the one mobster strongpaw who isn’t too superstitious to sneak into a cemetery after dark.” Judy narrowed her eyes accusingly, unsatisfied with his damnable “logic.”

“If anyone within a hundred miles asks you what you know,” Nick concluded optimistically, “the most responsible thing you can say is, “Nick? Nick who?””

Judy retracted her paw from his and used it to smack Nick sharply on the nose. “Nick-who’s-sleeping-on-the-couch-tonight? That Nick?” She reached over and snatched the remainder of Nick’s fries. “Jerk,” she declared, the obvious winner of the debate.

Nick’s phone buzzed atop the napkin holder. Lou’s sour mug flashed onscreen like a cranky chaperone during prom night.

Judy scooted to the edge of the booth as Nick put on his jacket. She grabbed the corner of his shirt and tugged, burying her face into his belly. “If you’re not back by 11, I’m watching Next Top Mammal without you,” she warned petulantly.

“You’re a master negotiator, fluff.”  
—  
Katja and Nick hoofed up the shallow hill in the direction the freshest plot, while Lou remained in the car (having only agreed to provide access, not camaraderie).

Nick pulled himself towards the piles of loose dirt as the light of a half moon streamed through the scattered, ambitious fingers of spruce and pine. He continued to grapple with a sense of ambivalent closure: relieved that he could actually bookend Francis’ impact on his life, but barely able to contain his gut-sick suspicion that his death hadn’t been…warranted, he supposed. He and Judy still knew next to nothing about what really happened that night, and the only outstanding evidence left would now be helping to make a forest instead of a case.

Nick slinked his way past an array of humble brass placards and patient saplings, somberly demarcating the deceased whose fertile remains would help grow the nascent taiga. He made out the names in the fickle moonlight, a disconcerting parade of Jane and John Does, until coming to a sudden stop at the furthermost reaches of the line. The plain, dignified font read “Fangsson, Francis”, just above a shallow, circular pit of rich, earthy loam. The material was fresh, still exposed to the open air. Nick stood, his hands in his pockets and fighting off a shiver in the damp evening air, as Katja thudded gently to a stop behind him.

“Should…” Nick hesitated. “Should we say a few words?” he asked, unsure of the protocol when illicitly visiting a friend’s composted body in the dead of night. Katja shifted her weight slightly and huffed a nonreply, which seemed only fair.

Nick hunched down, staring at the unbelievable resting place of a forgotten bear. He blinked away a sudden bout of boreal hayfever, his nose running in the cold, and reached down and placed a paw flat on the hallowed ground. “Sorry, buddy.” He flexed his paw gingerly through the peat-like surface. “Sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”

Katja shifted her weight again behind him, impatiently. “Let’s go, Nick,” she urged, laying one paw on Nick’s shoulder. “This place gives me the creeps.”

Nick drew back his hand, bits of moist soil clinging to his pad. He should have been mortified, but the surrealism of his circumstances made his friend’s remains feel like just another part of the landscape. He rolled a lump back and forth in his palm, almost disassociated in his calm observance. “It’s funny,” he whispered. “You’d have thought it would have smelled.”

Katja drew back her paw. “Now you’re giving me the creeps, fox.” Nick could almost hear her fur bristle.

The piece in Nick’s palm slowly broke apart into smaller and smaller pieces. It was bizarre to think that a life like Francis’ could end in something so organic and glistening, almost iridescent. The tiniest bits of it reflected the moonlight like unexpected jewels. Nick couldn’t detect even the slightest trace of polar bear in this muddled mix of silt, clay, and…

Chitin?

The subtle ridges of a partial exoskeleton peered out from beneath the muck. Nick stared at the familiar contours, as his eyes followed the lines drawn by faint spindles of shattered antennas and jumbled thoraxes. Shards of gossamer wing fluttered to the ground like fine rice paper.

“Katja,” he said, with disbelieving alarm. “This looks like beetle burger.”

He heard the burning fur an instant before he smelled it. His tail spasmed along the ground as his legs gave way and he fell sidelong into Francis’ dirt. Pulsing with errant electricity, he watched as a snow-white figure leaned over, contrasting menacingly against the moonlit night sky.

“Sorry, Nick.” Katja’s voice emerged as Nick lost his fragile hold on consciousness. “I would say it’s nothing personal, but that’s not true…”

“You’ve always been a smug, know-it-all little scat.”


	11. Chapter 11

Tied into a well-bound jumble in the boot, Nick had tried to construct a mental map of where Katja had taken him in the drive out from the gardens. When it had been trotted out in one of the young adult mouse detective novels he’d read as a kit, he seemed to recall that trick working beautifully. In the real world, it turns out that the application of 50,000 volts did very little to improve one’s spatial relation skills.

Now, the lingering scent of alfalfa and barley permeated the pores of the unadorned brick walls as the handcuffs cut off circulation in Nick’s wrists and ankles. A portable generator hummed persistently on one wall, kitty-corner to a large steel door that emanated a bubble of chilled air which Nick could feel even from his fetal position around a concrete post in the center of the room. It was not his ideal way of being the big spoon.

Nick was no farmer, but he thought it a reasonable assumption that flowering grasses seemed out of place for a shuttered industrial building that came with large, walk-in freezers. He thought back to the flummoxed realization he’d had at the side of Francis’…decoy grave? Whatever it was. All together, this most likely put him in one of the abandoned factories in Back-of-the-Hive, the neighborhood abutting the swarm yards.

One ear literally to the ground, Nick could just faintly hear Katja as she spoke quietly into her phone on the other side of a brick partition wall. Her voice was so low that each terse sentence fragment dropped to the floor like leaden weights. As she finished, however, Nick could just barely make out two words: “Find her.”

Nick’s cheek felt the ground quake softly, as Katja strolled back into the room, her suit still spotless and clean. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble,” she lamented icily, “if you’d just brought your bunny with you.” She plodded over to Nick, her sinewy frame towering a meter and a half above him. “Now we have to keep you, as leverage to get her…” she went on, gesturing with her paws as if trying to negotiate a rug sale in Sahara Bazaar. She shook her head in stolid dismay. “What a mess you’ve made, Nick.”

“Where’s Francis, Katja.” Nick tried to glare up at the bear with as much menace as a hogtied canid could muster. Katja seemed to pay him no heed, ambling over to one wall to grab a beaten metal stool. She placed it in front of Nick and sat down, the legs straining audibly under her weight.

“Have you heard of fugu, Nick?” Nick blinked at the culinary segue. “Toxic fish. There’s a tanuki bar that serves it, at Hoarfrost and Moss. Leaves you stone cold if you don’t prepare it properly.” Katja stared off to one side, not even looking at Nick, as if fondly remembering how she’d once skirted death over dinner. “You know you’ve got the good stuff when your gums start to tingle.” Nick decided then and there that he preferred his oral tingling without neurotoxins, but to each their own.

“My liver used to be the same way, you know,” Katja carried on, impassively. “Back when we were still feral and raiding seal villages. We developed a tolerance for some vitamin. Stored it all down here,” Katja marveled, patting her belly with one paw with an air of barely-subdued admiration. “Enough to knock flat any other species.”

“Katja.” While Nick appreciated the wild culinary adventures of Anthony Boardain every now and again, this did not seem like the time. “Where’s Francis.” Katja looked down at him with a face that fluctuated with stern disappointment and pity.

“Over there,” she announced, gesturing with the same paw towards the humming freezer. “What’s left of him, at least.”

Nick lay on the floor in silence. He gazed across the factory floor at the stainless steel door, uncomprehendingly. He looked up at Katja, his mouth falling open a fraction as his disbelieving brain tried to formulate a response.

“One hundred and thirty-eight orders,” Katja muttered, a trace of awe in her voice. “He always did want to travel.”

Nick’s tail ran cold. His chest seized with instinctual rejection, his paws clenching in and out as his brain pleaded with his body to keep his blood circulating. Nick had read _Silence of the Lambs_ , once and only once. At no point had he ever wished to become part of the narrative.

“Francis was a good bear, Nick. But he stopped pulling his weight a long time ago.” Katja spoke as if she were doing Nick a long overdue favor, eradicating the relatively blissful ignorance that now seemed positively pollyannaish. “He’s made more people happy in the past two weeks than he ever did while he was alive.”

Nick’s mouth finally began to function again, as the adrenaline of revelation flooded his nerves. “You - and Jaghide?” Nick sputtered, struggling impotently at his cuffs, his belly chaffing against the unyielding pillar. “You’re all just part of some sick CULT?”, he demanded, his voice reverberating off the impassive walls. As the echoes faded away, Nick heard another sound step in to take its place: the distinct clack of four-toed hooves on concrete.

“Let’s ask the good doctor. Doctor!” Nick froze as the hooves came to a stop somewhere behind him. “Nick was wondering if you prefer the prime rib or the tenderloin,” Katja enquired amicably.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Eli spat, with an audible sneer. “I’m vegan.”

Katja looked down at Nick, and bent her paws back at the wrist in a gesture of almost meek defensiveness. “Pescetarian,” she assured him.

Eli continued their walk through the room and out the other side without a backwards glance. “You need to understand, Nick.” Katja demurred. “It’s just business.” Katja paused for effect, lowering her head to deliver the polar bear equivalent of a joke. “I thought you would admire business partners with complimentary skill sets.”

“FINNICK WORE DIAPERS!” Nick erupted, appalled by the comparison. He felt the cuffs tear into his flesh as he thrashed wildly on the ground, completely unable to gain any kind of traction or upper hand. “This is insane!” he snapped, eyes wild. “What kind of business is murder, and…” Nick brought himself short, unable to give voice to an even more horrific follow-up.

“Karl worked with us before. Handled a few witnesses.” Nick’s mouth went dry as he continued to absorb an unholy confession. “Some mammals will only go into the back of a squad car if they think you can protect them from something even worse. But if, at some point, they ‘resist’…” Katja trailed off. “Who can blame an officer for defending himself?” She casually lifted Nick’s shackles with one subdued rear claw. “Eventually, Karl and I realized that we were throwing away a perfectly good business model.” Nick flinched away from Katja, hugging the column as if he might curl inside it and disappear.

“A little extra kickback is all it took for Eli to write things off,” Katja noted, suspiciously. “I'm not sure that one even cares about the money.”

Without warning, a guttural, rodent scream inflicted itself from the other room and into the night, ricocheting in desperation off every brick and pillar. Even Katja seemed momentarily disturbed, although in truth she was more frustrated by her partner’s unprofessional lack of discretion.

“LOU!” Nick screamed, his senses back on high alert. He heard the foulmouthed flat-tail pour forth a string of foul invective, remarkable in its color and creativity given the circumstances. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU,” his senses electric with fight or flight.

“Are you kidding?” The stool creaked as Katja stood, seemingly satisfied with her pitch. “We’ve had a standing order for beaver tail for six months. Besides,” she said, turning over one arm so she might better assess a wraparound bandage that had begun to spot with faint crimson in a stout, thin line, in a puncture wound so crisp you could use it for a dental cast. “I gave him a chance.” She looked down at Nick, his copper coat harried and wrung-out on the concrete floor. “I’ll never understand how you inspire this kind of loyalty, Nick.”

Nick gasped for breath, every paw trembling as his adrenal glands began to run on empty. His mind struggled to focus on something other than the pure drive of survival. “You’ll chop up an addict,” he stammered helplessly, “but you won’t give Lou an aspirin?”

“Would you come back to a diner whose food had traces of sedatives?” Dr. Lichstone clopped purposefully back into the room, carrying a small plastic cooler like you might see at a tailgate party. “I once read a paper on how they electrocute schools of fish. For aquaculture,” they lectured casually as they pulled open the freezer door and slid the cooler inside. “If they have any idea that they’re about to die, their flesh floods with stress hormones. It affects the taste.” Without further ado, Eli turned tail and strode back to their victim-in-waiting.

For the next few seconds, Nick and Katja listened to the steady torrent of bucktoothed billingsgate spewed forth without pause. Katja looked almost pained. After a minute, she sighed aggressively and walked out of the room and around the corner, where Nick made out the gentle clink of buckles on steel. A few seconds later, Lou’s outrage fell several decibels, even as the now-muzzled intensity remained.

Katja returned to the room in a foul mood - irked, it seemed, that she had to do everything around here. She thumped over to Nick, reaching down to undo the pair of cuffs that latched him around the pillar but leaving those that immobilized his hands and feet. Nick attempted, pitifully, to roll away, but Katja just held him to the ground with one paw.

“Francis was clean, by the way.” Nick squeezed his eyes shut, feebly praying that any moment he’d wake up in a cold sweat in a crappy apartment. “He’d spent the better part of a month in that filthy igloo of his, toughing it out. He was really proud about it.” Slowly, without resistance, the fight seeped out of Nick’s limbs, his body completely drained of energy. “It took a lot of encouragement. I gave him a liter of cod liver oil on his birthday.” Katja seemed almost proud of her thoughtfulness. “Told him a tablespoon a day would help him with the shakes.”

The bear lifted Nick effortlessly by the scruff of his neck, like a child. Dangling listlessly from her gargantuan paw, she carried him into another room, where they came upon another stainless steel door much like the first. No generator in sight, it hummed only with barren emptiness. Katja flipped the handle, pulled, and tossed Nick carelessly inside. His body and shackles clattered to the floor in a heap.

“I hope you rot,” Nick managed to spit, weakly, surrounded on all sides by dank and uncaring walls.

“Us? We’re just the suppliers, Nick.” Katja glowered into Nick’s cage, her massive frame blocking out most of what light the environment could hope to offer. “Eating meat is just ancient history to you and me. But for prey?” Nick shuddered as Katja slid the final puzzle piece into place. “It’s taboo,” Katja told him. “And taboo sells.” Katja closed the door with a terrible clack, leaving Nick to the abject darkness.

“We even have a client in Bunnyburrow,” he listened to her taunt from the other side of the steel. “Can’t even digest it properly, but he’s in it for the thrill. So enjoy that little nugget, Wilde,” he heard her trail off as she walked away. “Which one of your lady’s cousins is a freak?”


	12. Chapter 12

One of the many benefits of having a bushy tail: it doubles as a pillow in a pinch.

Nick had actually managed precious bits of fitful sleep, as unlikely as that had seemed at first; his sheer bone-numbing exhaustion had overpowered the frenzied panic. He still woke up with a start a half-dozen times throughout the night, as he half-dreamed the sensation of heavy paws on his shoulder, or the feeling of nipping teeth around his taser burns. But as his nerves tried to mend its jagged edges, he’d also had time to realize: they’d gotten to him. From his uncomfortable huddle on this pupforsaken floor, he bitterly resolved not to make that mistake again.

But the bulk of his waking thoughts inevitably came back to Judy. They had both agreed to stay at his place for the night, although that seemed like little protection from professional criminals who no doubt had staked out both of their places. But his one snippet of overheard conversation suggested that Judy had managed to escape Katja’s net (which included at least Karl, if not more). And if they didn't have her, they had every reason to suspect that Nick could bring her to them.

Judy’s absence, it seemed, was the only reason Nick was still in one piece. 

He felt the ground began to quake, steadily. His tail unfurled as he achingly pushed himself upright on one arm. A moment later, he heard the door unlatch with a harsh metal squeak, and what little light sneaked in from inside the factory depths wasn’t even enough to hurt his eyes. He saw a blur of an underhanded paw, and flinched as a brown paper bag thudded against the ground and skidded to a stop against his shin.

“Grub Deluxe,” Katja said. Nick glared at the Bombardier Burger logo, and turned away with an unconscious reaction of newfound loathing. He used to like their grub patties, too. “I’ll pass,” Nick mustered charitably.

“Suit yourself.” Katja threw open the door the rest of the way and grabbed hold of Nick by the front of his shirt while picking up the untouched dollar menu item with her free paw. “But remember: no free samples.” For just a moment, Nick considered whether sinking his canines into Katja’s forearm would be worth the broken jaw.

Nick swung from Katja’s arm like a joyriding sloth as she lugged him back into the room from the night before. She returned him to his former position around the pillar, the chains of the matching cuffs at his wrists and feet joined together by their own pair. By the amount of sunlight filtering in through the skylights, coated in burnt algae, he figured that it was verging on early evening. By that measure, he’d been MIA for almost a full day.

“Nick.” His ears flicked reflexively as it took in the familiar voice, as if it carried its own electric shock. He could still envision the line of unflossed, stumpy teeth he saw in the alley, like a gateway to river horse halitosis. “I hate to tell you this, but there’s been a break-in at your apartment.” Jaghide’s trunk-like legs stepped into Nick’s peripheral vision as they took a stand just above Nick’s head. “Judy’s, too. The guys are worried sick. No one can get a hold of either of you.” He heard the soft crinkle of a sandwich bag. “Thanks for looking after this, by the way.”

Nick arched one eye and hit Katja, in front of him, with a bemused expression. “You should hear this guy have a heart-to-heart. He’s a born counselor.” He awkwardly craned his head back towards Karl, his face saccharine with interest. “Are you available for birthday parties?”

“I didn’t lie to you, Nicky.” Jaghide squatted down slowly onto his haunches, bagged stun gun still dangling from one hand, and for a second Nick feared that Jaghide would lose his balance and give Nick the most embarrassing epitaph ever. “I didn’t sign up for this. I do have a wife and kids.” Karl shook a stubby, partially-webbed finger in his face with conviction. “But mortgages and private schools aren’t cheap.”

“Goodness, no. They aren’t as affordable as your badge.”

Karl sighed as he stood, eyeing Katja with strained patience. “Did you search him?”

Katja snorted at the offense to her profession. “He wasn’t carrying,” she growled derisively. “And I threw his phone over a bridge.”

“Not what I meant,” Karl grumbled, lowering himself onto his knees behind Nick’s torso. Nick writhed with token resistance and Karl’s grubby fingers took liberties up and down his shirt and pants as he felt a fat, conical cylinder slide out of back pocket. Karl reached over and held the novelty carrot upright, a few inches in front of Nick’s angry snout.

“Is this it? Is this THE pen?” He stood again, Nick deflating slightly with frustration. He had hoped that he'd managed to press the record button with his hip sometime last night as Katja was talking, but he couldn’t be sure; it’d been worth a shot. “I can’t believe you carry it with you,” Karl griped. “You’re such a bucksucking sap.” Nick heard the clatter of plastic on the hard floor behind him, followed by a resounding smack of flesh on concrete. Nick felt jagged bits of fractured ink reservoir splatter against the back of his shirt.

“You know,” Karl mused as he lifted one foot slightly, shaking off bits of crushed circuitboard. “I used to think that you ran the cons, Nick.” He rested one hand against Nick’s pillar and leaned in, glowering down at his snarky captive. “But it’s really her.”

“She _is_ a natural.” Nick allowed himself a smile, as even the mere mention of Judy’s spirit lifted his own. “You should see her get free refills on movie night.”

“Not that,” Jaghide said. He pushed himself off the pillar and came around to the other side, both hands on his rotund hips. “Better than any of us, you know what it’s like to cheat somebody and have them thank you for it,” Karl blustered, as Katja casually picked the dirt out of her claws. “You used to understand the law, Nick. But now look at you.” Jaghide spat, off-target, and a swampy glob landed perilously close to Nick’s chin, to his disproportionate relief. “She got you to believe in it,” the hippo puffed.

“Yeah, well,” Nick mused sympathetically. “Just be glad she’s not selling you a fur rug.”

“How did you break open the Nighthowler case, again? Threatening a small-time bootlegger with the polar bear plunge?” Karl looked over to Katja, dramatically fishing for affirmation. “How’s that square with…what does she call it?” Jaghide provoked. “‘Making the world a better place?’”

Karl’s rank hypocrisy, and Judy’s idealistic words in his mouth, temporarily short-circuited Nick’s capacity for banter. “Compared to…” Nick shook his head, disbelievingly, as if pestered by gnats. A few meters away, the industrial freezer droned impassively. “Or…”

“And here I thought you liked a good hustle,” Jaghide said, his bulbous head cracking an enragingly smug smile. From anybody but Judy, he decided, Nick did not appreciate serving as a dart board for smarmy punchlines.

“This is starting to sound familiar. Do you two share notes?” Nick pondered out loud. “Or are you just part of the same villainous writer’s club?”

“Some excitement for the perverts, and some money for the working mammal,” Jaghide rationalized with ease. “Everybody wins.”

Nick had grown tired with Karl’s bluster. “Trust. Integrity. Bravery.” Nick thrust his strong but fragile chin at Karl’s chest, reciting the polished motto that circled his badge. “Tell me, Karl. Hustler to hustler. Which one fetches the best price?”

“You’ve forgotten where you came from, fox.” The hippo pulled the sandwich bag out of his pocket. “Upholding the law has never been about justice,” he said, as he carefully extracted the weapon that had spent the last two weeks buried under Tundra Parkway. “Only power,” Jaghide announced, almost proudly. “And Hopps will realize that soon enough. As soon as you tell us where to find her.”

Nick set his chin, putting up a brave front, but his stomach churned at the thought of thrashing about in pain on a dirty concrete floor, even for Judy’s sake. “So what now?” he demanded, unconvincingly. “The Jackrabbit Bauer special? I could use a massage.” They could open a parlour, Nick thought. Call it Mongoloids Dream of Electrifying Sheep.

“Why bother? You’d eat your own tail before you gave her up.” Jaghide’s face perked up, and he chuckled to himself. “Not a bad idea,” he pointed out proudly to Katja, who waved him off as if he’d begun to smell.

“You think you can touch the city’s most famous cop?” Nick laughed as he found himself, metaphorically, on more comfortable ground. “As if you could keep up with her.”

“You mean the hero cop with secret ties to an organized crime boss? Yes, whatever will we do.” Katja stepped over with the same stool as before, taking a heavy seat between him and Karl. “We could try to pin it on Bellwether, I suppose, but every crime family’s hit has its trademark. They’ll deny it, there’ll be retributions. But nothing that should interfere with business. May even help.” Katja stole some side eye at her transparently disagreeable business relationship. “Always a market somewhere.”

Nick suddenly heard the misplaced, opening beats of the Kanine West track, “Stampede This Town.” Katja looked askance as Jaghide dug into his pocket and extracted his phone, alight with the shining profile of a polar bear flexing in front of a mirror at a CrossFur gym. Karl excused himself abruptly, and moved off towards a more private corner of the factory. “He’s all yours,” he called behind him, haughtily. As he meandered down a long hallway just out of earshot, Nick heard the faint beginnings of his conversation. “Snarlov, mate,” Karl enthused. “Sure, poker’s still on for tonight.”

Katja leaned in, her patience for felonious niceties officially exhausted.

“Rabbits,” Katja whispered. “Big families.” Nick’s brave face crumbled as his blood ran cold.

“How many brothers and sisters does she have, Nick?” Katja splayed her paw and surveyed her array of claws. “So many choices.”

Nick felt himself begin to scream.


	13. Chapter 13

Nick had no idea that his scream would echo so much. Or that it would sound like a flabbergasted hippo.

Katja immediately bolted backwards, her stool teetering indecisively before careening to the floor and ringing like a bell in the empty air. Polar bears, again, continued to impress Nick for their surprising capacity for not only stealth, but speed. Katja disappeared around the corner, a chaotic chorus of commands shaking the earth as it descended upon Nick.

“Officer Wilde is secured,” Nick heard a stoic rhino radio behind him. A few tail’s lengths to the side, Nick heard Delgato call for a pair of bolt cutters. “Oh, McHorn,” Nick waxed melodically. “You should have gone into musical theatre. You have the voice of an angel.” Considering the circumstances, Nick was pretty proud to inspire such a protracted sigh. Nick sat up with a start. “Lou! Lou’s hurt,” he relayed desperately to his fellow officer, gesturing wildly in the beaver’s direction. The rhino took off running.

“How did you find me?” Nick asked Delgato with genuine amazement, as the tiger descended upon his cuffs like a cat on a mission. Delgato smiled smoothly. “PawT&T needs a ten-hour window to install my cable,” he sniped, as Nick felt the circulation return to his limbs. “But tell them a cop’s life is on the line, and they hand over the keys to Jaghide’s GPS so fast it makes your tail spin.”

“NICK!” The bunny’s voice traveled almost as fast as she did, slamming into and wrapping her whole torso around Nick’s neck like a loving, sentient scarf. Nick turned tail just as quickly and took her into his arms, as they both huffed in each other’s scent in hungry gulps. “You dumb fox,” Judy raved, as Delgato took a few conscientious steps back. “You stupid, hare-brained, beautiful fox.”

“Where were you?” Nick said, shuddering with relief. “They couldn’t…I couldn’t….”

“I heard them break into my place,” Judy told him breathlessly, taking Nick’s face into her paws. “On my phone. From the baby monitor.” Judy had insisted on getting the two-way model so she and Ursula could sing baby-soothing duets. When he got out of here, Nick realized, he owed that wombat her weight in adorable rodent onesies.

“I snuck out onto your fire escape just before they got there,” Judy explained. “I think I gave Hadley a heart attack when she saw me in her window.” That poor marsupial, Nick thought. Just her luck to get one and a half neighbors who did nothing to help her anxiety.

“We recorded them as they searched your place. Through the wall. We heard Karl’s name,” Judy marveled, in transparent relief, her unbidden smile shining in Nick’s eyes as she massaged his muzzle, his own paws refusing to unlatch behind the small of her back. “You wouldn’t believe how quickly that koala can whip up a contact mic.”

“She called me from the bathroom. I hardly understood a word through all the chirping.” For the first time he could remember, Bogo’s massive bulk felt more comforting than it did intimidating, his own center of indisputable bovine gravity enveloping Nick and Judy as he approached. “Tell us what you know, Wilde.”

He did. Judy’s paws never broke contact with his fur, although her face performed amateur gymnastics as they processed a whirlwind of emotion. Delgato excused himself halfway through, and McHorn’s hide turned a novel shade of pale purple that Nick had only ever seen around Judy’s shower drain. Bogo tried to maintain an unflappable presence in front of his officers, but Nick watched the buffalo as he tried to look towards the forbidden freezer with a steady gaze. He failed, multiple times.

As Nick’s story finally caught up with the present moment, the assembled officers stole glances at each other, in a stunned silence that only Bogo seemed allowed to break. Bogo’s horns seemed to bear down impossibly heavy on his head as he put a stunningly caring hoof on each of Nick and Judy’s shoulders.

“You’ve done enough,” he said finally. “Both of you.” He looked at both cops, in turn, his face pulsing with heartfelt sympathy. “Go home,” he said, almost pleading.

As they walked away, Judy under Nick’s arm, both flashed back to that night in the Rainforest District, as many of the same officers watched a rabbit and a fox shuffle off into the distance. This time, they felt not a trace of the derision they’d encountered that night.

They walked out of the factory, into a flurry of flashing lights, and helped each other into the back of Grizzoli’s squad car to be shepherded home. Several squad cars over, Nick could faintly make out the nervous twitching of an impressively panicked hippo, sweating buckets all over the back seats. Next to it, Fangmeyer and Wolfard wheeled Katja into a waiting wagon, taser leads trailing off her chest in seemingly every direction.

Nick’s head fell back into the seat, a wave of weariness ready to swallow him whole.

“…I should have stuck to selling pawpsicles,” he said.

“Fat chance, skunkbutt.” Judy burrowed into the side of his chest, sedating herself with his familiar musk.

“That is not my new nickname.”

“Shut up and let me have this.”


	14. Chapter 14

The rising steam from the mug of cloudberry tea wisped gradually off into the breeze. Two soft paws gripped it tightly, letting the aroma diffuse around their owner's nose as they slowly brought the herbal brew to an unseasoned palate. Judy let the warm, tawny amber roll around her tongue before swallowing. She could definitely see the appeal.

Judy’s ears redirected themselves to her right, as she picked up the gentle tones of goodbye followed by the soothing crunch of gravel underpaw. Nick slid his phone into his pocket as he wandered back from the relatively private respite on the other side of the bridge. “Sorry that took so long,” he demurred, in needless apology. He retrieved his tea with a tender smile. “Told you it was good.”

“I can see why you like coming here,” Judy admitted softly, gazing serenely towards the dangling leaves of the weeping willow in the near distance. “I didn’t get to appreciate it the first time.” She sat up and scooted over on the sun lounger to make room for Nick, his arm curling her snugly against the side of his chest as he slid into the fox-shaped groove the lounger had grown over time. “What’d they say?”

“They’ve discharged Lou.” Nick took a modest sip as he reviewed the relevant details in his mind. “Ursula is already talking to the machine shop. She’s trying to convince him to at least consider the platypus model.” Judy tried to cover her snicker beneath one paw, failing miserably. “Lou wants it to come with a phone jammer so he can make the bus a little quieter,” Nick relayed fondly. “Hadley seems game.”

He skillfully slipped off his shades with his tea-sipping paw. “Katja and Eli aren’t talking. But Karl is.” Karl had actually folded faster than a mousetrap boutique in Little Rodentia, but that still didn’t mean he had had any contact with their “customers”; the only fingers he could point had zeroed in entirely on his erstwhile partners. “Guess he’s not big on loyalty, either,” Nick commented morosely.

Both bunny and fox sat together, wading in their own thoughts, as the springtime sun warmed their fur. Over the horizon of Nick’s chest, Judy studied the ZPD cap as it hung lazily off the corner of the lounger. Judy reached over Nick’s shoulder, her forearm gently nuzzling Nick’s cheek as she did so.

“He only got away with as much as he did,” Judy murmured quietly, plucking the cap off its perch and tracing out the ZPD logo with the thumb of her other paw. “Because of this.”

Nick folded his shades slowly and placed them onto the ground, next to his half-read library copy of _Watership Down_. “Yes,” he said sadly. “Yes, he did.” He flashed back to Jaghide’s parting words, the dirty cop’s voice overflowing with unbridled arrogance.

Judy’s ears drooped so low that they hugged the back of her head like a veil. “Ben says the guys are talking about bad apples,” she said. “But I’ve grown apples, Nick.” She flexed the brim of the cap in two, and let it bounce back into place. “All it takes is one to spoil the barrel.”

“Carrots.” Nick ran his fingers between her ears, from the crown of head and down her neck. “We’re nothing like Jaghide.”

“No.” She sighed, reaching over to stash the cap under the lounger and out of sight. Judy rested her chin in one paw pensively for a few moments as Nick refilled his tea from his elephant-sized thermos. He could have used it as a helmet, and Judy as a foot bath; Nick was pretty sure he’d once seen one at work in an unlicensed gerbil brewery. “I’m much smarter,” Judy announced with conviction. She turned to Nick, and narrowed her eyes as if appraising a possibly counterfeit work of art. “And you’re a bit prettier,” she allowed, begrudgingly.

“You’re a silver-tongued devil, fluff.”

The two partners rested in silence, staring off over the rolling, sleepy hills as the wind kicked up a smorgasbord of scents, of prairie grasses and frolicking insects. Somewhere up the hill, unseen, an overly prompt cicada crawled out of the ground triumphantly, only to wonder where the rest of their brood had gone. Judy ran her paws in circles around the buttons of Nick’s shirt.

“Chief says we can take another week, if we want.” Nick tightened his grip around Judy’s shoulder and chest, unthinkingly loving. “Maybe see your parents?” Judy ears perked a little, as she glanced up at Nick with a terrible poker face that reeked of easy contentment.

“Yeah.” She snuggled into his chest an extra inch. “That’d be nice.”

Nick rolled his nose along the edges of Judy’s ears, imbibing her intricate but indomitable scent. He pulled her tight to his chest in the face of a strong breeze, as he heard the willow branches shimmy against each other in the wind.

“Did I tell you,” Judy asked, in a moment of unbidden pride, “that my brother just joined the ranger scouts?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sunquistadora for serving as betareader/editor!


End file.
